A plane with 28 people on board has gone missing in Russia’s Far East region, the country’s emergencies ministry has said.
The Antonov An-26 plane, with 22 passengers and six crew, was flying from the city of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky to the village of Palana when it missed a scheduled communication, local emergency officials said.
According to the local transport ministry, it also disappeared from the radars.
An investigation has been launched, and a search under way along the missing plane’s route.
The aircraft was coming in for landing when contact was lost about 10km (six miles) away from Palana’s airport.
The head of the local government in Palana, Olga Mokhireva, was on the flight, spokespeople of the Kamchatka government said.
Interfax news agency quoted the local meteorology centre as saying that weather in the area was cloudy.
The plane belonged to a company called Kamchatka Aviation Enterprise and has been in operation since 1982, Russian state news agency Tass reported.
The company’s director, Alexei Khabarov, told the Interfax news agency that the plane was technically sound.
In 2012, an Antonov An-28 plane belonging to Kamchatka Aviation Enterprise crashed into a mountain while flying from Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky and coming in for a landing in Palana.
A total of 14 people were on board and 10 of them were killed. Both pilots, who were among the dead, were found to have alcohol in their blood, Tass reported.
Source: Read Full Article
