The Boeing 737-800 plane, which skidded off the runway during landing at Trabzon Airport in northern Türkiye five years ago, has found a new purpose as a unique pide (Turkish flatbread) restaurant.
The retired plane is now a pide salon on the Black Sea coast at Yomra Beach and has welcomed the first visitors onboard.
Passengers who experienced the terrifying moments during the incident reunited as they became the first guests of the transformed "airplane pide salon."
Seated at tables placed in the area where their seats once were, they enjoyed their pide meals, Demirören News Agency (DHA) reported on Wednesday.
The plane was arriving from the capital Ankara to Trabzon on Jan. 13, 2018, when the pilots lost control during 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, which was retired and removed from its location after 20 hours of work by a team of 100 people with 500-ton cranes, was taken to the Yomra district by truck where it was designated to be converted into a pita bread restaurant after technical inspections.
After remaining idle in the district for a while, the plane was redesigned and transformed into a pide salon by three investors to whom it was allocated.
Following the completion of the approximately TL 5 million (around $212,320) redesign and necessary environmental considerations, the airplane began serving customers as a restaurant.
One of the former passengers Mensur Turhal, 55, who lived through the traumatic experience recalled the event in January 2018, noting he was with his son on board the plane and had jumped out from the plane's door and fell toward the sea.
"I managed to get out via my own efforts. We were trapped inside the plane for about 40 minutes after the accident. There was a smell of fuel inside the aircraft. We were scared, thinking we will burn. If someone had ignited a fire inside, we would have exploded like a bomb. We were face-to-face with death," he said.
"When I returned to this plane, the screams of the children on that plane echoed in my ears. Everyone was worried about their lives," Turhal recalled.
Another passenger, Evren Murat Öztekin noted that the traumatic memory of the fear of death experienced on the plane is something that one cannot get over for many years.
Recalling the frightening moments during the landing, Öztekin said that he tried to exit the plane by opening the emergency doors.
"I got on the wing of the plane but it was impossible to jump down. I got back in the plane again. There was a very strong smell of fuel inside. The plane was on the slope. Everyone had fallen toward the nose of the plane. What happened was really terrible. We thought the plane would catch fire and we would burn to death. Normally, a place in which we experienced the fear of death would not be suitable for enjoying pide (pita) now. But this means life goes on. We need to be hopeful,” he said.
