Plane crashes in Russia with 28 people aboard

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/>