A Russian plane carrying almost 220 people from Egypt to Russia disappeared from radars, and crashed in central Sinai, according to Russian and Egyptian authorities.
Kolavia Flight 7K9268, an Airbus A321, went off radar 23 minutes after taking off from Sharm El-Sheikh International Airport, Sergey Izvolskiy told the media citing preliminary data.
The plane was carrying 212 passengers and 7 crewmembers, he added. Seventeen of the passengers were children. According to the Russian embassy in Egypt, all on board were Russian citizens.
Egyptian Prime Minister Sherif Ismail confirmed that the Russian plane did go missing over Sinai and said a cabinet-level crisis committee has been convened to deal with the incident.
The crash site was discovered hours later in a desolate mountainous area of central Sinai, Egypt’s aviation ministry reported.
All passengers and crewmembers are presumed to have been killed in the crash, Egyptian sources told Reuters.
The Egyptian military told RT access to the crash site may be difficult for the press due to the volatile security situation in the Sinai. Large parts of the peninsula are dangerous due to the presence of militants, with only coastal areas in the north and south adequately guarded by security forces. The crash site is some 100km south of Arish, the largest city in the Sinai.
The flight was traveling from the Egyptian resort to St. Petersburg. It belonged to the Kogalymavia airline, which also uses the brand name Metrojet, an operator popular among Russian tourists going to Egypt.
The plane was supposed to contact air traffic in Turkish Cyprus’ Larnaca after leaving Egypt’s airspace, but failed to do so.
A source at Sharm El-Sheikh Airport told RIA Novosti the pilot of the missing plane requested a change of course, saying the jet would have to land in Cairo.
The source said the crew of the crashed plane had complained to the airport’s technical service that the jet had engine problems.
Metrojet had a fatal incident in 2011, when one of its planes caught fire on a runway in Surgut Airport in Russia’s Urals. Three people died and 40 were injured as the plane burned out in just 10 minutes.
The last large-scale Russian airline incident happened in November 2013, when Tatarstan Airlines Flight 363 crashed at Kazan International Airport while attempting to land. Fifty people died in the incident.
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Death toll rises to 25 in Taiwan plane crash caught on video
A TransAsia Airways flight crashed into a Taipei river shortly after takeoff Wednesday with 58 passengers on board. Dashcam footage from cars on a bridge beside the river captured the plane going down. Dozens were either killed or missing. VPC
Video Transcript
Automatically Generated Transcript (may not be 100% accurate)
00:06 Dramatic video captured the moment a trans Asia Airways flight 00:10 crashed into excitement river. Many were feared trapped inside kids lives 00:14 as the jetted out of the shallow river. Rescuers worked frantically 00:18 to say the 58 people on board and they feel ready 00:21 to go for mentality but one fire officials that things did 00:24 not look optimistic. Some including at least one child were pulled 00:28 from the wreckage July. Others were able to walk away and 00:31 our own. But as night fell dozens were confirmed dead more 00:35 remain missing either still in the wreckage and pulled down her. 00:40 Dash cam footage for more than one car on the highway 00:42 beside the river. Should the plane barely miss an apartment building 00:46 before clipping and operates a taxi was hit as the plane 00:49 went down injuring the driver. While the cause of the crash 00:52 is not yet known. Taiwan's state news agency reported the pilot 00:56 called out mayday three times shortly after takeoff.
BEIJING — At least 25 people died and 15 survived a spectacular crash caught on video of a TransAsia Airways flight that clipped its wing on a bridge after takeoff from the Taiwanese capital Taipei and crashed into a nearby river.
Eighteen people remained missing and were feared dead.
Taiwanese rescuers used a massive crane to hoist the ATR 72-600 propjet from the shallow river after survivors were brought to safety on rubber rafts or scrambled to the river bank on their own. One injured person was reportedly found in a park along the river, Taiwan News reported.
Dramatic dashcam footage from a vehicle on an elevated highway shows the plane banked sharply to its left after taking off, just missing apartment buildings. Its left wing clipped the side of the highway. A taxi on the bridge was hit as the plane crashed into the river, injuring the driver, Taiwan's TVBS news reported.
Rescuers rushed to the scene of the crash, where a large portion of the wrecked fuselage jutted out of the shallow Keelung River with one wing missing. Hours later, emergency personnel in rubber dinghies crowded around what remained of the plane.
At the crash scene, local TV footage showed a small child, one of two children on board, sitting upright in a rescue dinghy beside the crashed plane. Two adults, with blood on their faces from head wounds, managed to walk up the bank.
A plane from Taiwan with 58 people aboard clipped a bridge shortly after takeoff and careened into a river Wednesday. Early reports say at least 8 people are known dead and at least two dozen were rescued. (Feb. 4) AP
Wu Jun-Hong, a Taipei Fire Department official coordinating the rescue, said those unaccounted for are either still in the wreckage or were pulled downriver. "At the moment, things don't look too optimistic," Wu told reporters at the scene. "Those in the front of the plane are likely to have lost their lives."
Video from a driver's dash camera captures the moment a turboprop plane with 58 people on board crashes into a Taipei river. Rough cut. (No reporter narration) Video provided by Reuters Newslook
Wednesday's flight took off from Taipei's downtown Sungshan Airport. Taiwan's Civil Aeronautics Administration described the ATR72-600 model as its best plane and said the pilot had 4,900 hours of flying experience.
The plane's black boxes were recovered and TV footage showed them in what appeared to be decent condition. Based on a recording of communications between the cockpit and the control tower, the pilot called out "mayday" three times shortly after takeoff, the CAA said. The recording did not provide any other clues about the cause of the crash.
The agency is assessing whether to ground other ATR 72-600 aircraft in Taiwan, said its director-general, Lin Zhiming.
The fate of pilot Liao Jianzong was not immediately known. Taiwan's Now News website reported he had worked hard to achieve his position. Born into a poor family, his parents sold clothes at a street stall. After serving in the army, Liao studied English diligently to land a commercial airline job.
More than half of the 53 passengers and five crewmembers aboard TransAsia Airways Flight GE235 en route to the outlying Taiwan-controlled Kinmen islands were from China. Relatives and friends on Kinmen, which is close to China, gathered at the airport to await news.
Thirty-one passengers were tourists from Xiamen, a nearby Chinese coastal city, who were traveling as two tour groups organized by two Xiamen travel agencies. One of the mainland tour groups was originally booked on a later flight to Kinmen, but changed to the ill-fated flight Wednesday morning, reported Taiwan's state news agency CNA.
After decades of rivalry and tense relations across the Taiwan Straits, Taipei has relaxed restrictions on mainland tourists in recent years, leading to a boom in visitors from China.
It was the second of TransAsia's French-made ATR 72 to crash in the past year. Last July, a flight crashed while attempting to land on the island of Penghu off Taiwan's coast, killing 48 people and injuring another 10. Stormy weather and low visibility were suspected as factors in that crash. Eversley reported from New York. Contributing: John Bacon, USA TODAY; Associated Press
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