71 dead, no survivors in Russian passenger plane crash

MOSCOW -- A Russian passenger plane carrying 71 people crashed outside Moscow on Sunday after taking off from the capital's Domodedovo airport, killing everyone on board.

The Antonov An-148 plane operated by the domestic Saratov Airlines was flying to Orsk, a city in the Urals, and crashed in the Ramensky district on the outskirts of Moscow. 

"Sixty-five passengers and six crew members were on board, and all of them died," Russia's office of transport investigations said in a statement. 

News agencies said witnesses in the village of Argunovo saw a burning plane falling from the sky. 

President Vladimir Putin offered "his profound condolences to those who lost their relatives in the crash," his spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.

State television aired a video of the crash site, showing parts of the wreckage in the snow.

Russia has seen record high snowfall in recent days and visibility was reportedly poor. 

The Russian-made plane was reportedly seven years old and bought by Saratov Airlines from another Russian airline a year ago.

Hard-to-reach crash site 

Russian media reported that the emergency services were unable to reach the crash site by road and that rescue workers walked to the scene on foot. Emergency services said in a statement that more than 150 rescue workers were deployed to the site. 

The transport investigations office said the plane disappeared from radar screens around four minutes after take-off. 

The Russian transport minister was on his way to the crash site, agencies reported. The transport ministry said several causes for the crash were being considered, including weather conditions and human error.

The governor of the Orenburg region, where the plane was flying to, told Russian media that "more than 60 people" on board the plane were from the region.

Prosecutors opened an investigation into Saratov Airlines following the crash. Russia's Investigative Committee will consider all possible causes, RIA Novosti news agency reported.

Saratov Airlines was founded in the 1930s and flies to 35 Russian cities. Its hub is Saratov Central Airport in southern Russia.

Local media website Ural56.ru in the Orenburg region showed footage of distressed relatives at Orsk airport, where the plane was due to land. 

Andrei Odintsov, the mayor of the city of Orsk, told Russian state television that six psychologists and four ambulances with medics are working with the relatives in the small airport.

Orsk is the second biggest city in the Orenburg region, near Russia's border with Kazakhstan.

Russia has suffered numerous plane crashes, with airlines often operating ageing aircraft in dangerous flying conditions.

A light aircraft crashed in November in Russia's far east, killing six people on board.

In December 2016, a military plane carrying Russia's famed Red Army Choir crashed after taking off from the Black Sea resort of Sochi, killing all 92 people on board. 

The choir had been due to give a concert to Russian troops operating in Syria. 

Pilot error was blamed for that crash. 

In March 2016, all 62 passengers died when a FlyDubai jet crashed in bad weather during an aborted landing at Rostov-on-Don airport.

source: news.abs-cbn.com

Russian plane carrying 224 crashes in Egypt's Sinai

CAIRO - A Russian plane with 224 people on board crashed in a mountainous part of Egypt's Sinai Peninsula on Saturday, with medics at the site reporting casualties, officials said.

Ambulances reached the site and began evacuating "casualties," officials and state media reported, without elaborating on their condition.

The plane took off early Saturday from the southern Sinai resort of Sharm el-Sheikh bound for Saint Petersburg in Russia but communication was lost 23 minutes after departure, officials said.

"Military planes have discovered the wreckage of the plane... in a mountainous area, and 45 ambulances have been directed to the site to evacuate dead and wounded," a cabinet statement said.

Officials and the state MENA news agency later said the "casualties" were being transferred to nearby hospitals.

At Saint Petersburg's Pulkovo airport, anxious family members awaited news of their loved ones.

"I am meeting my parents," said 25-year-old Ella Smirnova, a tall young woman seemingly in shock. "I spoke to them last on the phone when they were already on the plane, and then I heard the news."

"I will keep hoping until the end that they are alive, but perhaps I will never see them again."

A senior Egyptian aviation official said the plane was a charter flight operated by a Russian company carrying 217 passengers and seven crew members.

The official said the plane was flying at an altitude of 30,000 feet when communication was lost.

Sergei Lzvolsky, an official with the Russian aviation agency Rosaviatsia told Interfax news agency that the Kogalymavia Russian airline had departed Sharm el-Sheikh at 5:51 am local time (0351 GMT).

He said the Airbus 321 did not make contact as expected with air traffic controllers in Cyprus.

COMMUNICATION LOST

"Communication was lost today with the Airbus 321 of Kogalymavia which was carrying out flight 9268 from Sharm el-Sheikh to Saint Petersburg," Lzvolsky later told Russian television networks.

"The plane departed Sharm el-Sheikh with 217 passengers and 7 crew members. At 7:14 Moscow time the crew was scheduled to make contact with... Larnaca, however this did not happen and the plane disappeared from the radar screens."

The flight was scheduled to land at St Petersburg at 0912 GMT, he said.

The contents of the plane's last communication with ground crews were not immediately disclosed.

The wreckage was found in a mountainous area roughly 100 kilometres (60 miles) south of the North Sinai town of El-Arish, Egyptian officials said.

State television reported that Prime Minister Ismail Sharif was headed to the site of the accident.

The last major commercial airliner crash in Egypt happened in 2004, when a Flash Airlines Boeing 737 plunged into the Red Sea after taking off from Sharm el-Sheikh.

The 148 people aboard that flight, most of whom were French, were killed.

Millions of tourists, many of them Russian, visit the resort town, one of Egypt's major draws for tourists looking for pristine beaches and scuba diving.

The resort, and others dotting the southern Sinai Red Sea coast, are heavily secured by the military and police as an Islamist militant insurgency rages in the north of the restive peninsula, which borders Israel and the Gaza Strip.

Militants in the north who pledged allegiance to the Islamic State group have killed hundreds of soldiers and policemen since the army ousted Islamist president Mohamed Morsi in 2013.

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com