Wreckage from a plane carrying 28 people that went missing on Tuesday was found a few miles from the airport in Russia’s Far East where it was supposed to land, officials said, and everyone aboard was feared dead.
The Antonov An-26 plane was on approach for a landing in bad weather when it missed a scheduled communication and disappeared from radar as it neared the airport in the town of Palana, officials from the Kamchatka region said.
Russia’s State aviation agency, Rosaviatsiya, said that parts of the plane were found about 3 miles (5 km) from the airport’’s runway, near the coast line.
Part of the fuselage was found on the side of a mountain, Russia’’s Pacific Fleet told news agencies, and another part was floating in the Okhotsk Sea.
Sergei Gorb, deputy director of Kamchatka Aviation Enterprise, said that the plane “practically crashed into a sea cliff,” which wasn’’t supposed to be in its landing trajectory.
The director of Kamchatka Aviation Enterprise, Alexei Khabarov, told the Interfax news agency that the plane was technically sound before taking off from the city of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky.