Plane with 49 people on board crashes in Russia (VIDEO)
The An-24 passenger aircraft was flying over Amur Region in the country’s Far East
A passenger aircraft operated by Angara Airlines has crashed in Russia’s Far East, killing all 49 people on board, emergency services confirmed on Thursday.
The Antonov An-24 twin-engine turboprop went down around 1pm local time near the city of Tynda in the Far Eastern Amur Region. The plane was flying a multi-leg domestic route from Khabarovsk to Blagoveshchensk and then onward to Tynda – a remote city built during Soviet times as a hub for the Baikal–Amur Mainline (BAM), Russia’s second major east–west rail corridor.
According to preliminary data, the aircraft was carrying 43 passengers, including five children, along with six crew members. The wreckage was found on a wooded mountainside approximately 15km from Tynda’s airport, with parts of the fuselage still burning when rescuers arrived.
“There are no signs of survivors,” a source in the regional rescue service told Moscow daily Kommersant.
The An-24 reportedly vanished from radar during its second approach to land, having aborted the initial attempt for reasons that remain unclear. Weather conditions at the time have not yet been publicly confirmed.
Russia’s Investigative Committee has opened a criminal case under Article 263 of the Criminal Code – violation of air transport safety rules resulting in death.
Angara Airlines, based in Irkutsk, primarily operates Soviet-era turboprop aircraft on regional routes across Siberia and the Russian Far East. The An-24 model involved in Thursday’s crash first entered service in the 1960s and remains in use on some of the country’s most isolated air routes.
Amur Region, home to roughly 750,000 people, borders China and spans a vast expanse of forests, mountains, and rivers. Tynda itself is a logistical outpost of fewer than 30,000 residents, built in the 1970s to support the BAM railway. The city lies over 2,000km from Khabarovsk, a major regional capital and the starting point of the doomed flight.
There was no immediate statement from Angara Airlines. A team of investigators and aviation safety experts has been dispatched to the crash site.
Footage from the scene shared on Telegram showed smoke rising from snow-dusted forested slopes, with emergency crews working amid wreckage strewn across the hillside.