Junaid Jamshed Shaheed, as plane crashes near Abbottabad

According to a list of passengers issued by PIA, popular personality Junaid Jamshed and his wife were also on the ill-fated plane.

Jamshed, a former musician turned religious preacher and 'naat-khwaan', was in Chitral and his name was among the list of passengers on board the flight. According to list, Jamshed was on the seat 27-C.

Jamshed's brother has confirmed that Jamshed was onboard the ill-fated plane. 

Pakistan has had a poor air safety track record in recent years. 

The country's last major air disaster was in 2015 when a military helicopter crashed in a remote northern valley, killing eight people including the Norwegian, Philippine and Indonesian envoys and the wives of Malaysian and Indonesian envoys.

In 2012, a Bhoja Airline plane, a Boeing 737 carrying 121 passengers and six crew members, crashed near Islamabad just before touchdown.

The worst aviation tragedy on Pakistani soil came in July 2010 when an Airbus 321 passenger jet operated by the private airline Airblue crashed into hills overlooking Islamabad. The flight was coming in from Karachi. All 152 people on board were killed in the accident, which occurred amid heavy rain and poor visibility.

Another deadly civilian plane crash involving a Pakistani jet came to pass in 1992 when a PIA Airbus A300 crashed into a cloud-covered hillside on its approach to the Nepalese capital Kathmandu, killing 167 people.

The PIA said an emergency response center has been activated and can be accessed at following phone numbers for updates: