MOSCOW: All 61 people on board a Flydubai Boeing 737 were killed when their plane crashed and burst into flames as it was landing in Rostov-on-Don, in Southern Russia, on Saturday morning, officials said.
The plane was making its second attempt to land in bad weather when it missed the runway, erupting in a huge fireball as it crashed.
The local emergencies ministry confirmed that all 55 passengers and six crew on board were killed.
“A Boeing 737 crashed as it was coming into land. There were 61 people on board. They are all dead,” said a spokesman from the local ministry, quoted by the official TASS news agency.
“flydubai regrets to confirm that flight FZ981 crashed on landing and that fatalities have been confirmed as a result of this tragic accident,” the airline said on its Facebook page.
Members of the emergency operations centre gather at the airport of Rostov-On-Don, the point of destination of a Flydubai Boeing 737-800 which crashed in Rostov-On-Don, Russia, March 19, 2016.—Reuters
Most of the passengers on board Flydubai Flight 981 were Russian, the regional governor said on television.
The accident happened at 0050 GMT, according to an official statement from the ministry.
“The Boeing 737 on the Dubai to Rostov-on-Don route caught fire (after crashing),” said the statement, adding that it took an hour to bring the fire under control.
Ian Petchenik, a spokesman for the flight-tracking website Flightradar24, told The Associated Press that the plane missed approach then entered a holding pattern and tried to land again before contact was lost.
Strong wind warning
The plane hit the ground a few hundred metres from the runaway as it was making its second attempt to land in poor visibility, Russian news channel LifeNews reported.
Footage shown on local media showed a huge fireball erupting from the crash site.
The cause of the crash was not immediately determined but Vasily Golubev, the governor of the Rostov region, said: “By all appearances, the cause of the air crash was the strongly gusting wind, approaching a hurricane level.”
It was raining hard and a strong wind warning had been issued by the local emergencies ministry, TASS said.
“We are putting our emergency response in place and we will be working closely with all the authorities involved. We will share as much information as possible just as soon as we can and we will provide updated information on a regular basis,” Dubai-based Flydubai said in a statement.
Boeing said they were aware of the incident.
“We’re aware of reports coming out of Russia and our team is currently gathering more details,” the plane manufacturer said on Twitter.
On Oct 31, a Russian airliner blew up in the air over Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, killing all 224 aboard. Investigators determined it was destroyed by a bomb onboard.
Good safety record
FlyDubai is a budget airline launched in 2008 by the government of Dubai, the Gulf commercial hub that is part of the seven-state United Arab Emirates federation. Its first flight took to the skies in 2009.
It shares a chairman with Dubai’s government-backed Emirates, the Middle East’s biggest airline, though the two carriers operate independently and maintain separate operations from their bases at Dubai International Airport, the region’s busiest airport.
FlyDubai’s fleet is dominated by relatively young 737-800 aircraft, the same model as the one that crashed. The airline says it operates more than 1,400 flights a week.
The airline has expanded rapidly in Russia and other parts of the former Soviet Union.
Dubai is a popular tourist destination for Russian visitors, who are attracted by its beaches, shopping malls and year-round sunshine. Like other nationalities, many Russian expatriates live and work in Dubai, a city where foreigners outnumber locals more than 4-to-1.
It has been flying to the southern city of Rostov-on-Don since 2013.
FlyDubai has a good safety record. In January 2015, one of its planes was struck on the fuselage by what appeared to small-arms fire shortly before it landed in Baghdad. That flight landed safely with no major injuries reported.
