The Russian Far East, a region containing gigantic natural spaces, is regularly bereaved by air disasters.
The number of passengers in this Antonov AN-24 is not clearly established for the moment.
The governor of the love region, Vassili Orlov, said Thursday that the drama had caused 48 people and announced three days of mourning. Initially, he said that 49 people were on the aircraft.
The Russian news agency TASS has written, citing operational services, that 46 people may have been on the plane, including two children and six crew members.
In a press release, Russian railways said five of their employees were on board. A Chinese national was also in the apparatus, according to the Consulate General of China in Khabarovsk, a Russian city located in a region close to that of the crash.
“Difficult to access” area
Previously, the rescuers said that “the flame fuselage” of the aircraft had been spotted by a helicopter. According to the region’s civil protection center, the crash took place 16 kilometers from the locality of Tynda.
It is a “mountainous place and difficult to access,” said the ministry of emergency situations on Telegram, adding that more than 149 rescuers and twenty equipment had been mobilized in this operation.
In the “complete absence” of road, they must make their way with heavy machines to the place of the fall of Antonov, he explained.
The site is located in the middle of a forest area, according to a video filmed by the helicopter having spotted the aircraft and broadcast by the ministry. On these images, we see a plume of smoke rising in the middle of many trees and flames near what seems to be debris of the plane.
The authorities clarified that he was part of the air fleet of the Angara Airlines company, whose headquarters are in the Irkutsk region, in Siberia.
Landing attempts
Earlier, the governor of the love region, Vassili Orlov, had announced that the Antonov, who was flying between Blagovechtchensk and Tynda, had “disappeared from radars”.
According to preliminary information, published on Telegram by the Department of the Russian Prosecutor’s Office responsible for transport in the Far East, the contact was lost with the aircraft around 1:00 p.m. local time (04:00 GMT) while it was “second approach” to try to land at Tynda airport.
According to Tass, citing a source in airport authorities, the plane was manufactured almost 50 years ago, in 1976, by the Aviant factory in kyiv, Ukraine, which was then part of the Soviet Union. In 2021, his navigability certificate had been extended until 2036, still according to this news agency.
Airplane and helicopter accidents are fairly frequent in the Russian Far East, a wild and remote region where many journeys must be carried out by the air due to the gigantic distances to be covered.
These disasters can be caused by difficult weather conditions, technical problems linked to dilapidated equipment or piloting errors.
At the end of August 2024, a mid-8 type helicopter, of Soviet design, crashed into the volcanic peninsula of Kamchatka, causing the death of the 22 passengers on board.
