According to Russia’s emergencies ministry, the plane had to abandon an initial attempt to land at the city and crashed while making a second attempt.
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Officials believe bad weather, which kept the plane from reattempting landing for more than two hours, likely caused the crash.
“At this moment, our thoughts and prayers (are) with those on-board and their loved ones and family”, FlyDubai CEO Ghaith Al Ghaith said in a recorded statement. “We do not know all of the details of the incident but we are working closely with all the authorities to establish precisely what happened”, Ghaith Al Ghaith, FlyDubai’s chief executive, said at a news conference in Dubai.
The friend, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he didn’t want to be named discussing his friend’s personal matters, said Socratous was an experienced pilot who had no complaints or problems with FlyDubai.
Earlier, Russia’s Emergencies Ministry had said 50 of the passengers and one of the crew members were Russian citizens.
“The aircraft was checked on 21 January”, Ghaith added.
“By all appearances, the cause of the air crash was the strongly gusting wind, approaching a hurricane level”, said Rostov regional Gov. Vasily Golubev.
The head of Russia’s aviation agency said there was no doubt about the safety of the runway or facilities at Rostov-on-Don and brushed off any blame directed at the air traffic controllers.
“(The airport’s) complete overhaul was completed previous year, and it has received all the necessary clearances, including worldwide ones”, he said. Rostov-on-Don is about 600 miles south of Moscow.
Ian Petchenik, a spokesman for the website Flightradar24, told The Associated Press on Saturday that the Boeing 737-800 initially tried to land at Rostov on Don at 2231 GMT.
According to the BBC, the plane had been circling in the sky for two hours after a first failed attempt to land the plane, and it crashed upon attempting to land again.
The closed-circuit TV footage showed the plane going down in a steep angle and exploding.
Al-Ghaith said the pilots hadn’t issued any distress call and hadn’t attempted to divert to an alternate airport.
“It was an uncontrollable fall”, said Sergei Kruglikov, a veteran Russian pilot, said on Russian state television. He said a sudden change in wind speed and direction could have caused the wings to abruptly lose their lifting power.
Of those on board, 55 were passengers and seven were crew members, the ministry said.
Russian officials said all passengers and crew, including four children, were killed in the crash.
The parents of flight attendant Laura Patricia de la Cruz confirm that the Colombian woman is among the 62 victims of the FlyDubai plane crash in southern Russian Federation.
“The plane touched the ground and fell to pieces”, said the Russian Investigative Committee – the equivalent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
A no-frills budget carrier which is a sister firm to Emirates Airlines, flydubai is government-owned and was set up in March 2008. Also, some relatives who are in Dubai, all of whom are eager to get to Rostov-on-Don will be taken there free of charge by FlyDubai.
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According to the Federal Aviation Administration, the aircraft maintenance inspections are graded from the least detailed and most frequent “A-Check”, to the most comprehensive “D-check”, which might occur only three to six times in a plane’s service life.
