All 48 passengers and crew on board a passenger plane that crashed in poor weather conditions in Russia’s far east have died, the head of the country’s Amur region has confirmed in a statement.
The Ministry of Civil Defence, Emergencies and Disaster Relief said earlier on Thursday that the An-24 plane, operated by Siberia-based Angara Airlines, dropped off radar screens while approaching its destination, Tynda, a town in the Amur region bordering China.
Russian rescuers found the fuselage of the plane in flames, the Emergencies Ministry said, and debris from the plane was located in Amur, Interfax news agency reported.
“An Mi-8 helicopter operated by Rosaviatsiya [Russia’s civil aviation authority] has spotted the burning fuselage of the aircraft,” the ministry said on Telegram.
According to TASS news agency, an error by the plane’s crew while landing amid poor visibility is one of the possible reasons for the crash.
One Chinese national was aboard the plane, China’s state-run news agency Xinhua reported.
The plane had initially departed from Khabarovsk before making its way to Blagoveshchensk on the Russian-Chinese border and onwards to Tynda.
Images of the reported crash site circulated by Russian state media show debris scattered among dense forest, surrounded by plumes of smoke.
Regional Governor Vasily Orlov said rescuers struggled to reach the site due to its remote location, 15 kilometres (9 miles) south of Tynda.
The transport prosecutor’s office in the far east said in an online statement that the plane was attempting to land for a second time when it lost contact with air traffic control and disappeared from radar.
Flying in Russia can be particularly dangerous in the vast country’s isolated hinterland, such as the Arctic and the far east, where weather conditions are frequently extreme.
While Russian aviation safety standards have improved in recent years, accidents, especially involving ageing planes in far-flung regions, are not uncommon.
In July 2021, all 28 people on board an Antonov An-26 twin-engine turboprop died in a crash in Kamchatka. And in September of that year, an ageing Antonov An-26 transport plane crashed in the Russian far east, killing six more people.
Russia also frequently experiences non-fatal accidents that result in rerouted flights and emergency landings, usually stemming from technical issues.
[Aljazeera]
