PIA CRASH UPDATE

MULTAN, Pakistan (AP) -- A Pakistan International Airlines passenger plane crashed minutes after take off on a domestic flight Monday, killing all 45 people on board as it slammed into a wheat field and exploded into flames.

The state carrier dismissed criticism from the president of the nation's airline pilots' association that its half dozen Fokker F-27 turboprop planes of the type that crashed were old and should be grounded.

Witnesses said the 27-year-old plane spiraled in the air as it plummeted to the ground on the outskirts of Multan, about three kilometers (two miles) from the city's airport, two or three minutes after take-off from the eastern city of Lahore.

"There was a huge explosion after the plane hit the ground," said Mohammed Nadeem who lives near the crash site. A nearby power line also caught fire.

There were no survivors among the 41 Pakistani passengers and four crew on board, said Malik Bashir, PIA's station manager at Multan airport.

A female flight attendant who was pulled alive from the plane's wreckage died later in hospital, airline security official Mohammed Iqbal said.

Bashir said the cause of the crash was not yet known, but ruled out the possibility of a terrorist attack. President Gen. Pervez Musharraf expressed grief over the crash and ordered an investigation.

Khalid Hamza, the president of the Pakistan Airline Pilots Association, claimed the Fokkers in the PIA fleet -- mostly used on less busy domestic routes -- were aging and should be grounded.

"I think these planes should have been grounded four, five years ago but perhaps the airline was waiting for such an accident," Hamza, who is also a PIA pilot, told the private Geo television station.

'All planes airworthy'

State-run Associated Press of Pakistan quoted the airline's deputy managing director Farooq Shah as saying that all of the planes -- including the one that crashed -- were airworthy, and that none of the remaining six had been grounded.

Chaudhry Bashir, a PIA spokesman, said the crashed plane was inducted into the airline's fleet in 1979. It had flown for 79,000 hours and was due to be grounded on completing 90,000 hours, he said.

"No PIA plane can come on the runway before it has had a full maintenance," he said.

Civil aviation officials have recovered the flight recorder from the debris of the crashed Fokker plane, an official at Multan airport said on condition of anonymity because he did not have the authority to speak to the media.

The fire caused by the crash left the plane's smoldering fuselage a blackened hulk and its seared tail lay on its side.

Bodies pulled from the wreckage of the plane were taken to the morgue at state-run Nishtar Hospital in Multan, which lies about 650 kilometers (400 miles) southwest of the capital, Islamabad.

About 500 relatives, women weeping and beating their chests in grief, gathered to claim the remains of loved ones for burial.

Many of the bodies were burned beyond recognition, said Dr. Gul Nawaz.

A PIA emergency department official who identified himself with the single name, Bashir, said the dead passengers included two army brigadiers, two judges of the High Court in Lahore and the head of a state-run university in Multan. Two male pilots and two air hostesses also died, he said.

The crash could put PIA's safety record under close scrutiny.

The airline has reported a number of emergency landings in recent years and in December 2004, several passengers on a domestic flight were injured when one of its jets suddenly dipped, fearing a mid-air collision with another plane.

In August 1989, another PIA Fokker, with 54 people onboard, went down in Pakistan's Himalayan north on a domestic flight. The plane's wreckage was never found.