Investigators will on Friday start working on the site where an aging Antonov An-12 cargo plane crashed in Russia’s Far East earlier in the week, an Investigative Committee spokeswoman said.
The crash site is located in a remote and hard-to-reach area. Investigators are waiting for Moscow-based Interstate Aviation Committee experts to arrive so that they could join them and head to the site together, spokeswoman Natalya Salkina said.
The plane, flying from the city of Magadan to the Chukotka Autonomous Area in Russia’s extreme northeast, was carrying 11 people and around 18 metric tons of cargo. It disappeared from radars some 300 km (186 miles) from its takeoff point shortly after reporting a fuel leak and engine fire on Tuesday.
No survivors were found when rescuers reached the crash site in helicopters on Wednesday morning.
The Emergencies Ministry reported that the flight recorders have been discovered and that debris from the plane was scattered across a radius of several kilometers.
All Russian An-12s were grounded on Wednesday.