A airliner with 49 people on board crashed Thursday in the region of love, in the Russian Far East, announced local authorities in these regularly bereaved territories by air disasters.
The “flame fuselage” of the aircraft was spotted by a rescue helicopter, said the Russian ministry for emergency situations.
The number of passengers in this Antonov AN-24 was not clearly clear. The regional governor initially announced that 49 people, including 5 minor people and 6 crew members, would be on board. Then the Russian news agency Tass said, citing operational services, that 46 people may have been on the plane, including 2 children and 6 crew members.
“No survivors discovered”
The region’s civil protection center said that the rescuers’ helicopter had not “discovered survivors from the air” by flying over the crash site, adding that teams went to the ground.
According to this source, the plane carcass was spotted 16 kilometers from the locality of Tynda, not far from the border with China.
The place of the disaster is in a “difficult place to access,” said the ministry for emergency situations, adding that more than 50 rescuers and a dozen equipment had been mobilized in this operation.
In the middle of the forest
The site is located in the middle of a forest area, according to a video filmed from the helicopter having spotted the aircraft and published 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 aircraft.
According to the authorities, it was a flight from the airline Angara Airlines, based in the Irkutsk region, in Siberia.
Earlier, the governor of the region, Vassili Orlov, had announced that the aircraft, which made a flight between Blagovechtchensk and Tynda, had “disappeared from radars”.
Plane made in 1976
According to preliminary information, provided on Telegram by the Department of the Russian prosecution in charge of transport in the Far East, the contact was lost with the aircraft around 1:00 pm locals (4:00 GMT) while it was “second approach” to try to land at Tynda airport.
According to Tass, citing a source in airport authorities, the plane had been manufactured almost 50 years ago, in 1976, by the Aviant factory in kyiv in Ukraine, which was then part of the Soviet Union. In 2021, his navigability certificate had been extended until 2036, according to TASS.
FGN with agencies