Recovery personnel have retrieved flight recorders from a Dassault Falcon 50 executive jet which crashed some 40min after departing Ankara on 23 December.

The Maltese-registered aircraft was transporting figures including Libyan army chief of staff general Mohammed Ali Ahmed Al-Haddad.

Turkish interior minister Ali Yerlikaya states that the aircraft departed Ankara’s Esenboga airport for Tripoli at 20:10.

“An emergency landing request was received from the aircraft near Haymana. However, contact with the aircraft was subsequently lost,” he says.

The loss of contact occurred at 20:52. Haymana lies around 50nm southwest of Ankara.

Yerlikaya has not elaborated on the nature of the emergency, but the jet appears to have turned back towards Esenboga.

Wreckage of the aircraft was located just south of a village called Kesikkavak, west of Haymana.

Yerlikaya says the debris field is around 3km2 in area.

He says transport safety investigators located the cockpit-voice recorder early on 24 December, and another flight recorder about 35min later.

“Examination and evaluation processes of these items have been started by the relevant institutions,” he adds.

While the ministry identifies the registration of the airframe involved as 9H-DFJ, there is evidence that the actual registration is 9H-DFS.

Malta’s official aircraft registry, as of mid-November, listed this Falcon 50 as being operated by the Maltese-based company Harmony Jets.