Amur, July 24: A devastating air crash in Russia’s remote Amur region on Thursday has claimed the lives of all 49 people on board a passenger aircraft operated by Angara Airlines. The Antonov An-24, which departed from Blagoveshchensk and was en route to Tynda near the Russia-China border, lost contact with air traffic controllers shortly before its scheduled landing.
The ill-fated flight was carrying 43 passengers, including five children, and six crew members. According to Russia’s state news agency TASS, the Soviet-era aircraft reportedly caught fire mid-air and vanished from radar screens. The wreckage was later discovered ablaze on a steep mountainside roughly 16 kilometres from Tynda by a Mi-8 search helicopter.
Officials from the Amur Centre for Civil Defence and Fire Safety confirmed the worst: “No survivors were found when a Mi-8 search helicopter flew over the crash site.” A spokesperson further stated that the plane caught fire upon impact, and emergency operations are being severely hampered due to the steep and inaccessible terrain, thick taiga forests, and swampy ground.
Notably, no distress signal was received from the aircraft before its disappearance, intensifying concerns about what may have caused the fatal crash. Preliminary information suggests the aircraft may have been attempting a second approach to Tynda Airport when it went off radar.
Governor of the Amur region, Vasily Orlov, confirmed that “all necessary forces and means have been deployed to search for the plane.” Meanwhile, investigators from the Far Eastern Transport Prosecutor’s Office have launched a formal probe into the incident.
The retrieval of the aircraft’s black box and the full-scale recovery operation will begin once ground teams can access the treacherous crash site. The tragic crash raises renewed concerns about the safety of aging aircraft still in service in remote parts of Russia.
