Accompanied by his party's three local leaders from Sivas Province and a news agency reporter, Yazıcıoğlu arrived in Çağlayancerit on March 25, 2009 at 13:00 EET (11:00 UCT) by helicopter, to make a speech.

At 16:10 local time one of the passengers, İsmail Güneş, a reporter for the Ihlas News Agency from Sivas, called the 112 emergency service from his mobile phone and said that "the helicopter he was onboard had crashed, he was injured with a broken leg and no one else, as he could see, had survived."

The calculated geographical coordinates determined the crash site was Mount Berit in the vicinity of Hacıömer and Sisne villages, around 20 km (12 mi) northeast of the town of Göksun in Kahramanmaraş Province.

[1][6][7] Teams of the gendarmerie and the Turkish Road Administration were engaged in opening roadways in the mountainous area under harsh weather conditions, where the temperature fell to −5 °C (23 °F) after midnight.

[1] The search efforts, concentrated around Kurucaova village and the foothills of Mount Kaman during the night, were suspended at 04:00 local time, but resumed at 05:30 hours with the sunrise.

The crash site was situated close to the snow-covered summit of Mount Keş in the region of Sisne and Elmalı, about four walking hours from Döngel village.

[13] Special operations SAR teams of the gendarmerie finally recovered the body of the 34-year-old reporter İsmail Güneş on March 30, five days after the accident, covered by snow between two rocks around 500 metres (1,600 ft) east of the crash site.

He had eventually freed himself from the wreckage, where his foot had been wedged, and slid downhill with the help of a seat from the aircraft to seek shelter under a tree beside a rock at Karayakup hill.

[14][15] Güneş's corpse was flown to the State Hospital in Kahramanmaraş, where four forensic experts from Adana conducted an autopsy and found that he had broken his left ankle and two ribs, and the reason for his death was exposure to cold weather.

The CEO of the holding company affiliated with Medair, Ali Sabancı, said that the helicopter was regularly maintained and the ELT device was installed one week before the accident.

In a press conference, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan expressed his appreciation to the rescue teams for their efforts despite adverse weather conditions at the crash site, and announced initiation of an official investigation into a possible failure of the authorities regarding the length of time the SAR operation had taken.