FlyDubai 737-800 (Flight No. FZ981) Crashed in Russia

Quote:Flydubai flight FZ981 has crashed in the southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don killing all 62 passengers and crew on board. The flight was en route from Dubai and crashed during its second landing approach amid poor weather conditions.

Air-traffic control and local emergency services confirmed that the Boeing 737-800 jet crashed near the runway during a second approach in conditions of poor visibility.

?According to preliminary data, the Boeing 738 crashed in poor visibility conditions, some 50-100 meters left of the runway, the source said.

A video recorded at the crash site reveals the Boeing-737-800 disintegrated on impact. Tiny pieces of the aircraft are scattered over a large part of the runway at Rostov-on-Dons airport.

An eyewitness, Arina Kozlova, who was driving near Rostov-on-Don Airport at the time of the crash, said the blaze from the explosion was so bright it was like having dawn in the middle of the night.

CCTV camera footage posted on YouTube claims to have captured the moment of the explosion as the aircraft impacted the ground. However, its authenticity could not be immediately verified.

All crew and passengers on board the plane were killed in the crash, according to the regional Emergencies Ministry.

?During the landing approach a Boeing-737 crashed. It had 55 passengers on board. All of them died, a regional spokesman told TASS.

?The plane, according to preliminary data, crashed during the second approach, the source told Interfax.

Spokesman for the southern bureau of Russias Investigative Committee, Oksana Kovrizhnaya, has put forward two versions of the crash: ?Pilot error in deteriorating weather conditions or a technical failure, she said.

Both FZ981 flight data recorders have been recovered from the crash site. Experts are evaluating whether any data can be retrieved from them, said Vladimir Markin, spokesman for the Russias Investigative Committee (IC). The cockpit voice recorder was found in the morning and the parametric recorder was recovered later in the day.

According Investigative Committee experts who examined the flight recorders, the black boxes are in a "normal condition," Oksana Kovrizhnaya said.

She said the data would be extracted as soon as possible.

For the FlyDubai air company, which started operations in 2009, the crash in Rostov-on-Don was the first fatal incident in the companys history.

Ghaith Al-Ghaith, CEO of FlyDubai, has excluded the possibility of a terror act on ill-fated flight FZ981. No distress signal had been issued by the pilots either, he said.

Al-Ghaith insists the captain, Aristos Socratous, was a highly experienced pilot with over 5,700 flight hours and that the plane was new. Manufactured in 2011, the aircraft passed its latest maintenance on January 21, 2016.

Pilot error in deteriorating weather conditions or a technical failure to be blamed

Source: https://www.rt.com/news/336185-boeing-cr...ai-rostov/