61 die when Dubai jet crashes on approach

MOSCOW— An airliner with 61 people aboard coming from Dubai crashed early Saturday while landing in the southern Russian city of Rostov- on- Don in strong winds, killing all aboard, Russian officials said.

All 55 passengers and six crew members were killed, Igor Oder, head of the emergency ministry’s southern regional operations, told Emergencies Minister Vladimir Puchkov in a televised briefing.

The Boeing 737- 800 belonged to the budget carrier FlyDubai.

In a statement, the budget carrier confirmed that flight FZ981 crashed on landing and said that there are fatalities.

“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.

Vasily Golubev, the governor of the Rostov region some 600 miles south of Moscow, was quoted by Russian news agencies as telling local journalists that the plane crashed about 800 feet short of the runway. News reports said the plane caught fire after the crash.

The cause of the crash was not immediately determined, but Golubev said: “By all appearances, the cause of the air crash was the strongly gusting wind, approaching a hurricane level.”

State news agency Tass said winds were 30- 50 mph at the time of the crash.