Russian Passenger Plane Loses Radar Contact, Whereabouts Uncertain

On Tuesday, Local officials stated that contact has been lost with a passenger plane carrying more than two dozen people in Russia’s Far Eastern peninsula of Kamchatka.

The An-26 was flying from Kamchatka’s main city of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky to the town of Palana when it disappeared and failed to land as scheduled, Valentina Glazova, a spokeswoman for the local transport prosecutor’s office said.

She further mentioned that 29 people were on board, including 23 passengers and six crew.

“Search and rescue efforts are underway,” she said. “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 the plane had been operated by a local aviation company in Kamchatka, a vast peninsula in Russia’s extreme Far East on the Pacific Ocean.

Russian news agencies quoted local officials as saying there were 28 people on board, including six crew, and that there were one or two children among the passengers.

There were conflicting reports of what may have happened, with one source saying that the plane could have crashed into the sea and another stating it may have gone down near a coal mine close to Palana.

Reports have it that a search had been launched involving at least two helicopters and rescue workers were on standby.