Moscow: Search teams after a wide-ranging search have found wreckage of an An-26 passenger plane with 28 people aboard that disappeared earlier Tuesday in Russia’s Far Eastern Kamchatka peninsula, the country’s aviation agency told AFP.
“Rescuers found the wreckage of the aircraft. Given the geographic features of the landscape, rescue operations are difficult,” the aviation agency said in an emailed statement, adding that the debris was found along the region’s Pacific coast.
The An-26 was flying from Kamchatka’s main city of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky to the coastal town of Palana when it disappeared at 2:40 pm (0240 GMT), Valentina Glazova, a spokeswoman for the local transport prosecutor’s office, told AFP earlier Tuesday.
Officials said that communication with the plane had been lost nine kilometres (5.5 miles) from Palana’s airport and 10 minutes before its scheduled landing time.
Helicopters, a maritime patrol aircraft and several ships were deployed in a search with a focus on the Okhotsk Sea.
The aviation agency statement said that the wreckage had been found at 9:06 pm local time (0906 GMT).
It added that the debris was located 4-5 kilometres (2.5-3 miles) from the airport’s runway “on the side of the coastline”, though it did not specify whether it was found in the sea.
Palana’s airport is located 3.3 kilometres (two miles) from the coastline.
Valentina Glazova, a spokeswoman for the local transport prosecutor’s office, told AFP the plane had been operated by a local aviation company in Kamchatka, a vast peninsula on Russia’s Pacific coast popular with adventure tourists for its abundant wildlife and live volcanoes.
Russian news agencies quoted local officials as saying most of the passengers were from Palana—which has a population of about 3,000 — including four local government officials and the town’s head Olga Mokhiryova.
Kamchatka’s government published a list of 28 people who were on board the plane, including Mokhiryova and one child born in 2014.
Citing emergency ministry sources, news agencies reported a search area of a radius of 15-25 kilometres (nine-15 miles) around the airport, with a focus on the Okhotsk Sea.
Helicopters and an Il-38 maritime patrol aircraft were searching the area as of 9:00 pm (0900 GMT), news agencies reported.
A source in the Pacific Fleet Air Force was cited by news agency RIA Novosti as saying that the search was hindered by “difficult” weather conditions.
The general director of the Kamchatka Aviation Enterprise, Alexei Khrabrov, said the search might have to continue in the morning.
“We will search until it gets dark,” he was cited by TASS as saying.
The Kamchatka government said the peninsula has five An-26 planes servicing remote areas. The regional transport ministry and the local aviation company said the plane—built in 1982 — was in good condition and had passed safety checks.
An-26 planes, which were manufactured from 1969 until 1986 during the Soviet era and are still used throughout the former USSR for civilian and military transport, have been involved in a number of accidents in recent years.
Most recently four people died in March when an An-26 plane used by ex-Soviet Kazakhstan’s military crashed while landing at an airport in the country’s largest city of Almaty.
Two recent Russian military accidents have also involved An-26 aircraft, resulting in the deaths of 40 people.
While Russia has improved its air traffic safety record in recent years, poor aircraft maintenance and lax safety standards still persist.
Flying in Russia can also be dangerous in the vast country’s isolated regions with difficult weather conditions such as the Arctic and the Far East.
Palana last saw an aircraft go down when an An-28 passenger plane struck trees during a premature descent in September 2012, killing 10 people.
The last major passenger plane accident in Russia took place in May 2019, when a Sukhoi Superjet belonging to the flag carrier airline Aeroflot crash-landed and caught fire on the runway of a Moscow airport, killing 41 people.