Pelted by monsoon rains, recovery crews ended their search Thursday night for the remains of the 152 people killed in Wednesday's passenger plane crash in Pakistan's capital city of Islamabad.
The Airbus A321 plane operated by Pakistani airline Airblue, was on a flight from Karachi when it crashed into the Margalla hills north of Islamabad.
The plane disintegrated upon impact, instantly killing 146 passengers and a crew of six.
Among the dead were two Americans, the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad has confirmed; however, the embassy is not releasing details until the next of kin is informed.
There is still no word on the cause of the crash. The Airbus crashed a minute after losing communication with airport's control tower early Wednesday morning amid heavy rains and dense fog. Eyewitnesses said the plane was flying at an extremely low level before crashing.
The black box of the flight has not been found, but many aviation experts previously had voiced concerns about Airblue's safety standards.
Former pilots and aviation experts have argued that Pakistan's Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) does not always enforce safety standards. The CAA rarely makes its investigations public, so accountability is an issue.
In 2008 interview with the BBC, a CAA employee told reporters that an Airblue plane was grounded in Manchester, England because an inspector found a serious problem with the aircraft months earlier. The plane was grounded because the problem had not been addressed.
Another crash in 2006 was allegedly caused when the CAA approved a plane, whose cargo was over weight, to fly.
Safety standards are not the only issue facing Pakistani aviation. The industry has also been known to force pilots to fly excessive hours, raising the risk of fatigue and pilot error.
Traffic-control protocols are also a problem. Many have wondered why the doomed Airbus was circling at 1,600 feet when the minimum altitude for Islamabad was 3,000 feet.
There is no current evidence that any of these issues were a factor in yesterday's crash.
By Adriana Padilla for PeterGreenberg.com.
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