Flydubai has announced that contacts are underway with families of victims of its plane, which crashed while attempting to land in the southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don.
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Russian investigators said the black boxes from the Boeing 737-800 were damaged in the Flight 981 crash in Rostov-on-Don during a repeated landing attempt under windy conditions at the city airport, the Wall Street Journal reported. FlyDubai confirmed that there were no survivors and said four children were among those killed. The explosion left a crater in the airport runway that needs to be repaired. Although the cause of the crash remains under investigation, experts immediately said wind shear, a phenomenon that involves a sudden shift in wind speed or direction, likely contributed to the crash.
People stood crossing themselves in near total silence before a makeshift shrine at the airport entrance as they read the names of the 55 passengers and seven crew members – 44 of them Russian – who lost their lives.
CEO of FlyDubai, Ghaith Al Ghaith, said there were no distress calls made.
The pilot and co-pilot had 5,965 and 5,769 hours of flying time respectively, making them “quite experienced”, al-Ghaith said.
The pilots were from Cyprus and Spain, while the cabin crew included two Russians and citizens of Seychelles, Colombia and Kyrgyzstan.
The Russian Emergencies Ministry said the plane clipped the ground with a wing and caught fire.
The aircraft was inspected last time on January 21, 2016, he said.
The crash happened at 0050 GMT (11.50am AEDT) during the pilot’s second attempt to land amid dense fog and strong winds. The aircraft that crashed was just over five years old. Rostov-on-Don is about 600 miles south of Moscow.
In a statement Flydubai spokesperson said: “Our priority is the extension of all possible care and respect to the families of the passengers and crew of flight FZ981”.
The airport closed for several hours following the incident, according to RT.
(Russian Ministry for Emergency Situations via AP). “So they had a sufficient level of aircraft control in any conditions”, he said. “An event dedicated to the memory of the victims will be held outside the global terminal of the Rostov airport”, a regional official said, according to Tass.
Viktor Gorbachev, director of the Russian airports association, said the airport in Rostov-on-Don has modern equipment to deal with adverse weather.
Socratous had previously worked for Helios Airways, the Cypriot airline that shut down after a plane crash in 2005. Pilot Vitaly Sokolovsky agreed, telling Rossiya 24 television that a sudden gust of wind could be particularly unsafe at low altitude while the pilot was throttling up the engines to make another run.
“The whole city is mourning and we will remember and honour the dead”.
The Investigations Committee Spokesman reminded that the plane’s voice and flight data recorders have been referred to the Interstate Aviation Committee for deciphering.
It was FlyDubai’s first crash since the budget carrier began operating in 2009.
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Russia’s aviation agency has 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.
