Three people have died after a passenger plane skidded off the runway and broke apart while landing at Istanbul's Sabiha Gokcen airport, Turkey's Health Minister Fahrettin Koca said Wednesday. Koca added that 179 people had been sent to different hospitals in the aftermath of the incident, which appeared to have taken place in poor weather conditions. He said that three people are currently in an intensive care unit. The Pegasus Airlines plane was carrying 183 people in total, including 175 adult passengers, two young children and six crew members, Istanbul Gov. Ali Yerlikaya said. The airline has confirmed that one of its planes, flight number PC2193, had skidded off the runway. Yerlikaya said the plane skidded up to 60m after landing, before falling up to 40m down a ditch. Footage from the accident site showed the plane off the runway. Dozens of first responders were working around the plane, which appeared to have split in two. The plane broke apart after skidding off the runway. The plane caught fire after landing, and ambulances and rescue teams were at the scene to rescue passengers. The airport has been temporarily closed to air traffic. Weather radar showed a line of showers and thunderstorms moving through the area at the time of the incident.<br/>Prosecutors in the capital Ankara have launched an investigation into the incident.<br/>
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Malaysian long-haul budget airline AirAsia X has formed a board committee to review corruption allegations by Britain’s Serious Fraud Office (SFO), a stock exchange filing showed Wednesday. The AirAsia X committee will comprise non-executive members of the board excluding Kamarudin Meranun and Tony Fernandes, who are co-founders of its parent company AirAsia Group, the filing with the Bursa Malaysia said. AirAsia Group said Monday it had also set up a committee to review the allegations and that CEO Fernandes and Chairman Kamarudin would step aside for at least two months while the airline and authorities investigate the allegations.<br/>
Virgin Australia will permanently withdraw all services from Hong Kong next month, with the coronavirus crisis proving to be the final straw for the airline as it decided to end its three-year attempt to crack into the Asian aviation hub. The airline said Thursday that its daily return Sydney-Hong Kong services would cease from March 2 following a "comprehensive review of the route" which concluded it was no longer financially viable.<br/>Virgin announced in November last year it would axe its Melbourne-Hong Kong service, effective from February 11. Australia's number two airline started flying to Hong Kong in June 2017, trying to break into a high-demand route dominated by Cathay Pacific and Qantas. Some 36% of the seats on Virgin’s Hong Kong flights were empty in November, according to Department of Infrastructure data, compared to only 20% for Qantas and Cathay Pacific. Virgin on Thursday said demand on the "challenging" route had been battered by months-long anti-government protests in the financial hub which, along with uncertainty around the coronavirus outbreak, led to the decision to drop the route.<br/>
Air India’s regional unit Alliance Air has been granted “special dispensation” by the Indian government to operate between India and Sri Lanka. A notice from the civil aviation ministry states that the exemption would stay in place until the carrier has a minimum of 20 aircraft, or has about 20% share of domestic capacity, whichever is higher. Under Indian civil aviation laws, an airline can only fly international routes once it has at least 20 aircraft. The carrier has 19 aircraft in its fleet currently. While the ministry notice did not indicate which routes Alliance Air would be operating, it names two airports which do not have scheduled operations: Palaly airport, also known as Jaffna International Airport, as well as Batticaloa airport. <br/>