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A Russian passenger plane has crashed near Moscow soon after take-off, killing all 71 people on board, with investigators saying they are looking at all possible causes.
Key points:
- The plane had been carrying 65 passengers and six crew
- Vladimir Putin ordered a special investigative commission to be set up
- Investigators are looking at all possible causes including weather conditions and human error
The Saratov Airlines regional jet disappeared from radar screens a few minutes after departing from Domodedovo Airport en route to the city of Orsk, about 1,500 kilometres south-east of Moscow.
Fragments from the Antonov An-148 airliner were found in the Ramenskoye area, about 40 kilometres from the airport.
The office of Russia's transport prosecutor said all 71 people on board had been killed.
Transport Minister Maxim Sokolov confirmed there were no survivors and said DNA tests would be needed to identify the dead.
President Vladimir Putin offered condolences to those who had lost relatives and ordered a special investigative commission to be set up.
Mr Putin also put off a planned trip to Sochi in order to closely monitor the investigation.
He was to meet Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas on Monday in the Black Sea resort, where the President has an official residence.
Instead, Mr Abbas will meet with Mr Putin in Moscow in the latter part of Monday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told Russian news agencies.
TV images of the crash site showed wreckage of the plane, including at least one engine, lying in fields covered with thick snow.
Helicopters were at the scene as well as rescuers on snowmobiles.
Debris and human remains scattered over a kilometre radius
An official of the Emergency Situations Ministry said two bodies and a flight recorder had been found.
Debris and human remains were spread over a radius of a kilometre from the crash site, investigators said.
They said they had opened a criminal case into the incident.
Among the possible causes they listed were weather conditions, human error and the plane's technical condition. No distress signals had been received from the crew.
The plane, manufactured in 2010, had been carrying 65 passengers and six crew.
Elena Voronova, a spokeswoman for Saratov Airlines, said there had been no concerns about the technical condition of the plane, which went into service with her company in 2016.
Images broadcast on state TV showed relatives waiting at Orsk airport, some with their heads in their hands.
The city's mayor told the Rossiya 24 TV channel a team of psychologists was working at the airport to comfort people.
Shabby equipment and poor supervision had plagued Russian civil aviation for years after the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, but its safety record has improved markedly in recent years.
The last large-scale crash in Russia occurred on December 25, 2016, when a Tu-154 operated by the Russian Defence Ministry on its way to Syria crashed into the Black Sea minutes after take off from the southern Russian city of Sochi. All 92 people on board were killed.
In March 2016, a Boeing 737-800 flown by FlyDubai crashed while landing at Rostov-on-Don, killing all 62 people aboard.
An onboard bomb destroyed a Russian Metrojet airliner soon after taking off from Egypt's Sharm al-Sheikh resort, killing 244 people in October 2015.
Reuters/AP
Topics: disasters-and-accidents, accidents, air-and-space, russian-federation
First posted