Russia’s state aviation agency said that wreckage from of a plane that went missing Tuesday in the Far East region of Kamchatka has been found around five kilometers (three miles) away from a runway in an airport on the Okhotsk Sea coast where it was supposed to land.
According to Russian media reports, none of the 28 people on board have survived the crash. The plane “practically crashed into a sea cliff,” which wasn’t supposed to be in its landing trajectory, according to Sergei Gorb, deputy director of the company that owns the aircraft, Kamchatka Aviation Enterprise. However, no bodies were found yet, and there was no official confirmation of the reports. Russia’s state aviation agency, Rosaviatsiya, said that parts of the plane were found about 3 miles (5 kilometers) from the airport’s runway. Part of the fuselage was found on the side of a mountain and another part was floating in the Okhotsk Sea. The plane was coming in for a landing when contact was lost about six miles away from Palana’s airport. A criminal investigation was opened.
An Antonov An-26 plane with 22 passengers and six crew members, flying from the city of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky to the town of Palana, missed a scheduled communication and disappeared from radar as it was on approach for landing. The head of the local government in Palana, Olga Mokhireva, was aboard the flight, spokespeople of the Kamchatka government said.
