Russian AN-26 plane consisting of 28 people including 22 passengers and six crew members that were on board crashed in Russia’s Far East region, Kamchatka Peninsula.
According to authorities, the plane had lost contact with the air traffic control just 10km away from landing at Palana’s airport. The weather had been reported to be cloudy at the time, as stated by the authorities.
Russia’s civil aviation authority confirmed that the plane’s crash site had been found after the emergencies ministry dispatched a helicopter and had deployed teams on the ground to look for the missing aircraft.
According to official Russian reports, there were no survivors.
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Reports :
Russian passenger plane with at least 28 people on board goes missing in Russia’s far east.
The An-26 was flying from Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky to Palana in the Kamchatka Peninsula when it lost contact with air traffic control and disappeared from the radar.— Geeta Mohan گیتا موہن गीता मोहन (@Geeta_Mohan) July 6, 2021
The plane was owned by a company called the Kamchatka Aviation Enterprise and had been in use since 1982 and according to the company’s director, Alexei Khabarov, there were no such issues in the plane as it was technically sound.
Russia, known for its infamous plane accidents, has tried to improve its air safety measures in recent years however, this recent incident again proves that the country has poor aircraft maintenance as it has dealt with several fatal air accidents.
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Russia’s history of aviation disasters
A similar incident took place previously back in 2012 when an Antonov An-28 plane under the Ownership of Kamchatka Aviation Enterprise crashed into a mountain while flying from Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky and coming in for a landing in Palana.
As a result, 10 people were killed in this unfortunate incident and both pilots who were dead were found to have alcohol in their blood, Tass reported.
On 1 July 2016, an Ilyushin Il-76 aircraft configured for aerial firefighting and belonging to the Russian Ministry of Emergency Situations crashed near Lake Baikal northeast of Irkutsk in Siberia, Russia. All ten crew members were killed.
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In another incident, Katekavia Flight 9357 was an Antonov An-24 regional aircraft on a domestic flight from Krasnoyarsk to Igarka in Russia that crashed on final approach in fog in the early hours of 3 August 2010, killing twelve out of the fifteen people on board.