A Russian plane crashed in the Moscow region with 71 people on board. According to officials, all passengers on board died in the crash.
The Saratov Airlines plane vanished from the radar minutes after taking off from Domodedovo airport and crashed near the village of Argunovo, according to the BBC. The plane also lost its radio contact seven minutes after takeoff, according to TheWashington Post. It was headed toward the Russian city of Orsk.
Witnesses in the village of Argunovo told local media that they saw a plane on fire falling from the sky, according to the Independent. “I walked out of my house and heard the plane hit the ground,” a witness said in an interview with REN TV. “There was a huge explosion.” The Russian state news agency Tass reported that the debris had been discovered by officials and “there are no survivors.”
The people on board the Antonov An-148 jet included 65 passengers and six crew members. Most of the flight’s passengers were locals from the region of Orenburg where the plane was flying.
It’s currently unclear what caused the crash. “We have all kinds of scenarios,” Russian Transportation Ministry official Zhanna Terekhova told Rossiya-24, according to the Post. “This could have been caused by anything, including human error or weather conditions.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin has reportedly expressed his condolences to families of the deceased and pledged to open an investigation into the cause of the crash.
Russia’s airline safety record is relatively poor. In the past decade, 326 people have died on Russian commercial flights compared to 61 in the U.S. for the same time period.
