An airliner, a Soviet-designed Antonov An-26, disappeared from radar on Tuesday, July 6, in the Russian Kamchatka peninsula - in northeastern Japan.
The device was on the link between the regional capital Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky and the small town of Palana when it stopped broadcasting, a spokeswoman for the regional prosecutor's office in charge of transport, Valentina Glazova, told AFP.
According to her, the plane was carrying 23 passengers and six crew members.
The Russian Ministry of Emergency Situations reports for its part that 28 people were on board, including 22 passengers.
“Search and rescue efforts are ongoing,” added Valentina Glazova.
"All we know for now (Tuesday morning) is that contact with the plane has been lost and it has not landed."
The plane was operated by a small local company from Kamchatka, a huge peninsula in the far east of Russia with very little population.
Different hypotheses were put forward on the fate of the device, a source telling the state-owned Tass news agency that the plane could have crashed at sea while another told Interfax that it probably crashed near a coal mine, near Palana.
Two helicopters have been mobilized to search for the device and rescue teams are standing by, ready to intervene, agencies say.
Problems with maintenance and compliance with safety rules
Russia, long known for its plane crashes, has significantly improved its aviation safety since the 2000s as the country's major airlines shifted from aging Soviet aircraft to more modern planes.
Maintenance problems and sometimes lax compliance with safety rules remain a problem and several plane accidents have marked these last years.
The last serious accident dates back to May 2019, when a Sukhoi Superjet from the national carrier Aeroflot caught fire while making an emergency landing at Moscow's Sheremetyevo Airport, killing 41 people.
In February 2018, an Antonov An-148 from Saratov Airlines crashed shortly after takeoff near Moscow, killing all 71 people on board.
An investigation had determined that human error was at the root of the accident.
Russia also frequently experiences non-fatal incidents, forcing flights to be diverted or to emergency landings usually due to technical issues.
In August 2019, a Ural Airlines plane carrying more than 230 people made a miraculous landing in a cornfield near Moscow after birds were sucked into a jet engine during takeoff.
In February 2020, it was a Utair Boeing 737 with 100 people on board that had landed on its stomach in northern Russia after a malfunction in its landing system, without causing any fatalities.
Air transport is also subject to often difficult flight conditions in remote regions of the Arctic and the Far East, where airplanes and helicopters are the preferred means of transport to link towns and villages. isolated.
With AFP
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