50 Killed In Russia Plane Crash

“According to preliminary information, all the people on board the flight, 44 passengers and six crew members, were killed,” a ministry spokeswoman told AFP.

A Boeing 737 belonging to domestic Russian airline, Tatarstan Airlines, has crashed while attempting to land at an airport in western Tatarstan, killing all 50 people on board, Russia’s emergency situations ministry said.

“There were no children among the passengers,” she added.

The local branch of the ministry said in an earlier statement that 44 people had died when the jet, arriving from Moscow’s Domodedovo airport, crashed on landing in the Volga city of Kazan at 7:25 pm local time.

The Tatarstan Airlines plane “hit the runway and burst into flames”, Russia’s Investigative Committee said in a statement.

Local news agencies reported the plane had tried to land three times before crashing.

There were no immediate indications of what may have caused the crash. Weather in the city soon after the crash was reported to be light precipitation and winds of about 8 metres per second.

Air safety in Russia is a major issue for the authorities following a severe deterioration in the quality of domestic services after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Officials blame most problems on pilot inexperience as well as poor maintenance by the small and poorly-regulated airlines that have sprouted up across Russia in the past two decades.

Kazan is the capital city of the Russian republic of Tatarstan, it is about 720 kilometres east of Moscow.