The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Plane from Dubai crashes in Russia; 62 dead
Strong winds reported as aircraft was landing.
Ivan Nechepurenko MOSCOW — A Boeing 737800 from the United Arab Emirates with 62 people aboard crashed early Saturday while trying to land at the airport in the southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don, Russian officials said.
All 55 passengers and seven crew members on the flight from Dubai were killed, and a list of victims was published on the website of the Rostov regional government. Vasily Golubev, governor of the Rostov region, said strong winds appeared to have caused the crash, but an investigation was just beginning. Rostov-onDon is about 600 miles south of Moscow.
Both of the plane’s flight data recorders were recovered, the Russian Investigative Committee, a law enforcement agency, said. In a statement on its website, the agency listed “crew error, technical failure, adverse weather conditions and other factors” as possible reasons for the crash.
The airliner was operated by the Dubai budget carrier FlyDubai, which confirmed that the plane had crashed on landing and that none of the passengers had survived. Forty-four of the passengers were Russian, eight were Ukrainian, two were Indi- an and one was a citizen of Uzbekistan, the airline said.
“We are doing everything that we can to help those who have been affected,” the airline’s chief executive, Ghaith al-Ghaith, said in a video posted on Facebook.
The crash occurred at 3:42 a.m. as the plane was making its second attempt to land, Russia’s Emergency Situations Ministry said. After missing its first approach, the plane entered a holding pattern for two hours as it waited for the weather to improve. On the second landing attempt, a wing of the plane struck the ground, and the aircraft began to break apart and burn, the statement said.