Turkey Grounds All C-130 Aircraft After Fatal Crash

On November 13, the Turkish Ministry of Defense announced that it is still too early to state the causes of the crash of a military transport plane in Georgia on November 11, which resulted in the deaths of 20 service members. The department added that technical inspections are ongoing.

The C-130 cargo plane was flying from Azerbaijan to Turkey and crashed on Tuesday. This incident was the deadliest tragedy for the NATO member country among military personnel since 2020.

During a briefing, the ministry stated that the official accident report will reveal the true cause of the crash, while also emphasizing that there were no munitions on the plane during its last flight.

According to the department, the aircraft was carrying a 10-person technical maintenance team for the Turkish F-16 fighter jets that participated in a military parade in Azerbaijan, as well as the crew and maintenance equipment. The last radio contact with the aircraft was about 40 minutes before the crash. The "black box," which contains the flight data and cockpit voice recorders, is now in Ankara for analysis.

Some analysts note that Turkey's fleet of Lockheed Martin C-130 aircraft is old and in need of modernization, despite the overall reliability of this model. In their opinion, the likely cause of the accident was a technical malfunction.

The ministry, which last month announced a deal to acquire 12 C-130J aircraft from Britain, informed that the crashed plane was purchased from Saudi Arabia in 2012 and, after modernization, was put into operation in 2022. Since then, it has been regularly used and maintained, with the last maintenance check being a month ago.

After the incident, all planned flights of Turkey's 18 C-130 aircraft have been suspended until the completion of technical inspections.