Six people die in An-148 crash
Baku, March 5 (AZERTAC). Six people died in the An-148 plane crash in the Belgorod Region, a source at the press service of the Russian Emergencies Ministry`s regional department told Itar-Tass.
"Aboard the plane were six people. All died. Their bodies are found. Among the victims are two pilots from Myanmar," the source said.
The aircraft was on a test flight to log hours. "It fell on a garden ground of a private house, 165 km from Belgorod in the village of Garbuzovo of the Alekseyevsky district. On the ground, there are no victims and no destruction," the spokesman for the regional department for emergencies said.
"When crashing into the ground, the aircraft burst into flames" a law-enforcement source told Itar-Tass. An operational group of the Belgorod regional department for emergencies and fire-fighters are working at the site.
An official at the Federal Air Transport Agency (Rosaviation) noted that the plane was experimental and belonged to the Voronezh aircraft plant. "It was a test flight. The liner did not belong to any airline," the agency representative said.
The An-148 is a short-haul civilian aircraft developed by the Antonov Aviation Scientific-Technical Complex together with the Voronezh Aircraft-Building Joint Stock Company (VACO). It is designed to carry 70 to 99 passengers. Its maximum range is up to 5,000 km, and the cruising speed is 800-870 km/h. The plane is capable to take off and land under any weather conditions on ground and artificial-cover runways. The detail designing of the aircraft began in 2001, and its flight tests started on December 17, 2004.
The new generation aircraft began to fly between Kiev and Kharkov on July 2, 2009.
At least 80 such planes will be built in Ukraine for domestic and foreign airlines.
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