Moscow (Russia): A Russian passenger plane with 17 people on board went missing Friday during a flight in Siberia. The regional branch of the Russian Emergencies Ministry said the An-28 plane disappeared in the Tomsk region in western Siberia.
The emergencies office said the plan carried 14 passengers, including four children, and three crew members. A search effort involving several helicopters is underway, officials said.
The An-28 is a small short-range, Soviet-designed turboprop used by many small carriers across Russia and some other countries. The plane that went missing belonged to the local Sila airline and was flying from the town of Kedrovoye to the city of Tomsk.
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The flight crew hadn’t reported any problems before the plane disappeared, officials said. But the plane’s emergency beacon activated, signalling that the aircraft had a forced landing or crashed.
The plane’s disappearance comes 10 days after another Russian plane crashed while preparing to land in bad weather on the Kamchatka Peninsula in Russia’s the Far East, killing all 28 people on board. The investigation into the crash of the An-26 plane is ongoing.
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(AP)
