Three years after it skidded off the runway and fell over a cliff, a passenger plane, abandoned to its fate, will finally have a new function: a pide restaurant.
The district municipality of Yomra, in Trabzon province, where the plane was towed to, announced that three businesspeople will invest TL 4 million (about $482,000) to repurpose the plane into a restaurant serving pide, the popular dish of the Black Sea region.
The plane was traveling from the capital Ankara to Trabzon on Jan. 13, 2018, when the pilots lost control during the landing. The plane was buried in mud, just 25 meters (82 feet) away from the sea, on the side of a cliff. None of the 162 passengers or six crew members were injured in the crash.
The plane was removed from the crash site and taxied to the airport where it remained for months before the insurance company put it on sale. Yomra Municipality acquired the plane to convert it into a “Millet Kıraathanesi,” a coffeehouse-library concept popularized by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
However, the plan never came to fruition and the plane was abandoned at a space used as a marketplace in the district.
Mustafa Bıyık, the new mayor of Yomra, said they decided to hand over the plane to three investors and the plane would be relocated to a coastal strip, like the last place it landed or failed to land. Bıyık told Ihlas News Agency (IHA) on Wednesday that the plane will be at its new location within three months.
