A passenger plane with 28 people aboard crashed in far eastern Russia on Tuesday, the authorities said, in the latest blow to the country’s sprawling but aging domestic aviation industry. The plane, a Soviet-made An-26 flying a regional route in the mountainous peninsula of Kamchatka, lost radio contact with air traffic control about 10 minutes before its expected landing in the town of Palana, near the Sea of Okhotsk, officials said. Hours later, airborne search crews found pieces of the plane’s fuselage in the sea and on the shore. There were not believed to be any survivors, Russian news agencies reported. The plane, Kamchatka Aviation Enterprise Flight 251, appeared to be making a second attempt to land amid foggy conditions when it hit a cliff. “The crash is presumed to have occurred during a go-around approach during landing in poor visibility,” said the Kamchatka region’s governor, Vladimir Solodov. The incident was Russia’s third major commercial aviation calamity in the last three and a half years. And it was at least the second failure involving a passenger plane flying to Palana from Kamchatka’s main city, Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky. <br/>
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Canada’s WestJet has named Diederik Pen, a former executive at Hungarian discounter Wizz Air, as its next chief operations officer. The Calgary-based carrier says on 6 July that Pen will join in the fall “following the completion of the immigration process”. “Diederik has an established track record of leading safe, efficient and cost-effective operations through periods of growth, and we are thrilled to welcome him to the WestJet family,” says CE Ed Sims.<br/>
Restructuring low-cost carrier Norwegian plans to “gradually increase” its flight activities in July in response to the easing of some travel restrictions in Europe. While Norwegian’s passenger numbers more than doubled in June over the previous month to 225,000, it remains a fraction of the 3.5m the airline carried in the same month in 2019. It also remains below the more than 300,000 Norwegian transported during August, September and October last year before the second wave of coronavirus further closed markets. Norwegian in May emerged from bankruptcy protection with a fleet of 51 aircraft – around a third of its pre-crisis size – and having axed its long-haul business. The airline operated 15 aircraft during June. Norwegian CE Geir Karlsen, the CFO who the board appointed to lead the carrier last month, says: “June traffic results still show the impact of low demand due to reduced flying schedules and government imposed travel restrictions.” However, he adds: “We have seen a continued month-on-month increase in bookings as countries ease restrictions. As a result, we have resumed flights to a number of key European destinations, we will continue to adjust and increase our network and schedules as demand rises.”<br/>
Romanian budget carrier Blue Air appears set to undergo a reverse takeover by an entity called Ridgecrest, following a preliminary agreement to acquire the carrier’s parent Airline Invest. Airline Invest, which is owned by entrepreneur Cristian Rada and his brother, wholly-owns Blue Air Aviation and Blue Air Technic. Ridgecrest has entered a non-binding heads of agreement which it intends to evolve into a legally-binding share-purchase deal. It says the proposed transaction will be “satisfied entirely” by issuing just over 9 billion new shares in the company to Cristian Rada and his brother, following which Ridgecrest would change its name to Blue Air Group. Bucharest-based Blue Air launched operations towards the end of 2004 and has built a fleet of around 20 Boeing 737s, operating multiple variants from the older 737-500 to the -800 and the new 737 Max.<br/>