Sunday, March 20, 2016

A Flydubai passenger jet has crashed in Russia, killing everyone aboard, 62 people including a crew of seven. The aircraft was making its second attempt to land early yesterday morning in Rostov-on-Don, a city in southern Russia, when it crashed.

Flydubai confirmed the crash on landing of flight FZ981. Four passengers were children. “We are doing all we can to gather information as quickly as possible. At this moment our thoughts and prayers are with our passengers and our crew who were on board the aircraft,” the airline said in a statement.

The flight was scheduled to land at 1:20 a.m. local time, according to Emergencies Minister Vladimir Puchkov, however went down at about 3:40 a.m. Investigations are ongoing.

CEO of Flydubai Ghaith al-Ghaith said, “We will have information about the circumstances of the incident and the black box in the future, and an investigation is being conducted in cooperation with the Russian authorities and we are waiting to see the results”.

Budget airline FlyDubai has been flying since 2009, based in the United Arab Emirates. This is the first crash in the airline’s history.

Mr. Ghaith said the pilot and co-pilot each had more than 5,000 hours’ flight experience. Russian officials said the international crew was made up of one Russian, one Cypriot, two Spaniards, a Colombian, and one each from Seychelles and Kyrgyzstan.

Security footage from a camera pointed in the direction of the airport shows the blast as the plane crash-landed.