The Tu-134 passenger plane belonging to the RusAir airline was en route from Moscow to Petrozavodsk on the night to Tuesday when it crashed in heavy fog on a highway just one kilometer from the airport, Vedomosti reports.
The plane had a total of 52 people on board. One of the people who died was a Swedish rescue worker on his way to a conference on rescue cooperation in the Barents Region.
An official from the Aviation Accident Investigation Commission has made a statement admitting that the landing lights at Petrozavodsk airport were off when the plane approached to land, and that this together with adverse weather conditions could have caused the tragedy.
The lights outage may have been caused by the airliner itself, Nikolay Fedotov, chair of the local committee for civilian safety told Russia Today. He said the Tupolev went 150 to 200 meters off course as it approached the runway and hit the high-voltage power line. The collision cut the power supply, and it took several seconds for the backup supply to switch on. Meanwhile, the aircraft hit several treetops with its wing and crashed, the official said.
One of the people who died was from the Netherlands, according to the Emergencies Ministry. Two victims were Ukrainian. There was also a family of four with dual Russian-American citizenship. The rest of the passengers were Russian citizens, Russia Today reports.
Nearly whole the leadership of Rosatom’s construction bureau Gidropress died in the accident, according to Vedomosti.
