Passenger plane missing in Russia’s far east: Live updates

A passenger plane carrying 28 people has gone missing in Russia’s far eastern Kamchatka Peninsula, according to local media reports.

The plane, an Antonov An-26 twin-engined turboprop, was en route from regional capital Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky to Palana, a town in northern Kamchatka, when it lost contact with air traffic control, Russia’s emergencies ministry said.

There were 22 passengers and six crew on board, according to the ministry.

Valentina Glazova, a spokeswoman for the local transport prosecutor’s office, told the AFP news agency that “search and rescue efforts” were under way.

“All that is known at this time, what has been possible to establish, is that communication with the plane was interrupted and it did not land,” she said.

Here are the latest updates:

3 mins ago (09:18 GMT)

Search area set

Citing emergency ministry sources, Russian state news agency Tass reported that a search for the plane was underway within a radius of 15-25 kilometres (9-15 miles) around the Palana airport, with a focus on the Okhotsk Sea.

“The area has been roughly determined within 15-25 kilometers from the airport, along the coastline. A search is also underway at sea,” an emergency ministry source said.

“The objective data shows that the aircraft crashed into the sea,” the source added.

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5 mins ago (09:15 GMT)

Child on board

Kamchatka’s government published a list of 28 people who were on board the plane, including one child born in 2014.

It said that communication with the plane had been lost nine kilometres (5.5 miles) from Palana’s airport.

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8 mins ago (09:12 GMT)

Cloudy conditions

The weather in the area the plane was travelling through was cloudy at the time it went missing, the Interfax news agency reported, quoting the local meteorology centre.

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13 mins ago (09:08 GMT)

Plane company’s director says aircraft was technically sound: Report

The plane belonged to a company called Kamchatka Aviation Enterprise. The plane has been in operation since 1982, Tass reported. The company’s director, Alexei Khabarov, told the Interfax news agency that the plane was technically sound.

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53 mins ago (08:27 GMT)

Plane crashed into sea: Report

Russia’s RIA news agency reported that the plane had crashed into the sea off the Kamchatka Peninsula as it was preparing to land.

Several ships were en route to the crash site, RIA cited emergency services as saying.

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57 mins ago (08:23 GMT)

Local official among the missing

The head of the local government in Palana, Olga Mokhireva, was among the 22 passengers on board the plane, Russia’s TASS news agency quoted local authorities as saying.

Other reports citing local authorities said most passengers were from Palana – which has a population of about 3,000 people – including three other local government officials.

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