A twin-engine plane holding 39 passengers and 4 crew members crashed soon after takeoff in Siberia on Monday, killing 31 people, according to Russia’s Emergency Situations Ministry. The ministry reported that the plane had taken off from the city of Tyumen and lost contact with traffic control immediately afterward. The flight operator, UTair, reported that the plane was trying to make an emergency landing when it went down, the RIA-Novosti news agency said. The plane split in half and caught on fire during the crash.
The 12 survivors were taken to hospitals, while the remaining passengers, including all four crew members, lay lifeless in the ruins of the plane. Officials are uncertain about the cause of the crash, but have recovered the plane’s data recorder, which is expected to help shed light on what happened in the flight’s final minutes. “Malfunction and pilot’s error are considered to be the most likely causes,” a spokesman for the Russian Investigation Committee, Vladimir Markin, told the Itar-Tass news agency. The plane crash was the country’s deadliest air disaster since the crash in Yaroslavl in September that killed 44 people. Dozens of Yaroslavl Lokomotiv professional hockey players were killed in the crash, including former National Hockey League players. There was only was one survivor in the crash, which investigators said was caused by a pilot’s error.
