The crew of an Antonov An-26 that went missing near the city of Khabarovsk in the far east of Russia did not survive, Russian state news agency TASS reported on September 23, 2021.
The aircraft, which belonged to a company called Letnye Proverki I Sistemy (Flight Inspections and Systems) and was carrying six people, disappeared from radar on September 22, 2021 during a flight to check airport communications equipment.
“According to preliminary data, there are no survivors of the plane crash,” a source in the emergency services told TASS.
“The crew actually had little chance to survive, the largest fragment of the aircraft was no more than half a meter long, they crashed into the mountain at full speed,” one of the members of the search group told the local news agency Khabarovsk Today.
The wreckage of the plane was located by an Mi-8 helicopter and rescue teams are moving to the site, the Russian Ministry of Emergency Services told Tass earlier on September 23, 2021.
“The plane crashed in difficult terrain. A ground group of personnel and equipment is moving to the crash site,” the ministry told the agency.
The An-26 is a twin-engine turboprop cargo and utility aircraft built by Antonov between 1969 and 1986.
According to the website of Letnye Proverki I Sistemy, the company owns one An-26 and one An-24.