A Beechcraft 55 Baron (B55) twin-engine plane crashed in Armenia, the Ministry of Emergencies of Armenia reported on December 1. The incident took place near the village of Jraber in the Kotayk region of Armenia at 14:20 (13:20 Moscow time). The plane caught fire after the accident.
“Two burnt bodies were found at the scene,” the agency’s website says.
The village of Jraber is located 26 km north of Yerevan. Two firefighters and rescue teams from the Regional Emergency Service of the Ministry of Emergencies, three rescue teams from the Traffic Police Special-Purpose Emergency and Rescue Operations Center, and doctors set off to the scene of the accident. The fire was extinguished at 14:41 (13:41 Moscow time).
The press service of the Armenian Civil Aviation Committee said that only two pilots died on the plane. The plane was private and registered in Slovakia.
The press secretary of the Republic’s Ministry of Emergencies, Hayk Kostnanyan, said that the pilots were on their way to Astrakhan from Yerevan’s Zvartnots airport.
“The plane crashed in an open area near the village of Jraber, the infrastructure was not damaged, no other dead were found,” he said.
AMI Novosti-Armenia writes that communication with the aircraft was cut off at 13:00 (12:00 Moscow time). According to Arm-Info, the Civil Aviation Committee has started collecting data on the incident.
What is known about the dead
Gevorg Sedrakyan, Head of the Kotayk Regional Rescue Department of the Ministry of Emergencies, told Sputnik Armenia that those who lost their lives in the plane crash in Armenia were Russian citizens.
“The burnt bodies of two pilots, citizens of the Russian Federation, were found at the scene,” the Ministry of Emergencies said in a statement. These are men born in 1979 and 1983.
According to Sedrakyan, the plane crashed into the land of a sand pit. The causes of the accident have not yet been reported, they will be clarified during the investigation.
The Ministry of Emergencies sought the preliminary cause of adverse weather conditions, including poor visibility in heavy fog, as well as difficult terrain.
According to Sputnik Armenia, only the tail part of the fuselage remained intact. While the work of the crime scene investigation teams continues, the bodies of the deceased have not been evacuated yet.
The Beechcraft 55 Baron is an American twin-engine light aircraft manufactured by Beech Aircraft Corporation and entered production in the early 1960s.