A Russian plane that crashed in northeastern Afghanistan om 20 January ans went missing has been intercepted. The air transport agency Rosaviatsia reported that four people survived while two are still missing. The plane, a Falcon 10 business jet, was on a hospital flight from India to Uzbekistan and Russia. Communication was lost on Saturday evening, and the fate of the two missing individuals is being investigated.
According to Rosaviatsia, of the six people on board, four are alive with various injuries. The Russian embassy in Afghanistan provided this information. The RIA Novosti news agency mentioned that the two passengers with serious injuries were Russians, and one of them had paid for the flight. The plane, built in 1978 by France’s Dassault, belonged to a company called Athletic Group and a private individual.
The crash occurred in Badakhshan province, which borders China, Tajikistan, and Pakistan. It is eight hours by road from the provincial capital Faizabad. The area is part of the Hindu Kush mountain range, home to Afghanistan’s highest peak, Mount Noshaq, standing at 7,492 meters (24,580 feet). Russian investigators have initiated a probe into the crash’s cause.
Around 25 minutes before the plane disappeared from radar, the pilot warned of low fuel and indicated an attempt to land at an airport in Tajikistan, as per an unnamed source reported by Russian news outlet SHOT. The pilot later communicated that one engine had stopped, followed by the second engine, according to SHOT. Reuters was unable to immediately verify these details.
India’s civil aviation authority clarified that the plane was not a regularly scheduled commercial flight or an Indian chartered aircraft. The flight was conducting a private medical evacuation from Pattaya, Thailand, a popular tourist spot for Russians, to Moscow, as reported by the Russian state-run TASS news agency, citing the Russian embassy in Bangkok.
The RIA news agency, citing a source at Thailand’s Utapao International Airport, mentioned that the plane carried a seriously ill Russian citizen from a hospital in Pattaya to Russia. The patient was accompanied by her husband, a private entrepreneur, who paid for the flight. According to various Russian media outlets, the passengers were a couple from Volgodonsk in southern Russia.
The manifest list for the plane, published by SHOT news outlet, seemed to indicate that the crew members were also Russian nationals. Russia’s Investigative Committee has initiated a criminal case to determine if safety rules were violated.
The owner of the plane, a small Russian company called Athletic Group LLC, did not respond immediately to a request for comment.
The Afghan aviation ministry, under Taliban control, stated that the plane’s planned route did not include passing through Afghanistan’s airspace. They suggested that, possibly due to technical issues, the plane had deviated from its intended route. The ministry reported that a technical team was investigating the situation.
Afghanistan’s police received reports of a plane crash in a remote, mountainous area in Badakhshan, located in the far north of Afghanistan, according to a provincial police spokesperson on Sunday. Zabihullah Amiri, a spokesperson for Badakhshan’s provincial government, informed Reuters that a team had been dispatched to the crash site, which is a remote area more than 200 km (124 miles) from the provincial capital, Fayzabad.
