Tourist helicopter crashes near volcano, all 22 people on board die
A tourist helicopter carrying 22 passengers crashed over the weekend near a volcano in Russia’s Kamchatka region, officials said Sunday.
The Russian Emergency Situations Ministry said the bodies of 17 people had been found and rescuers were still searching for the remaining residents.
The helicopter, operated by Vityaz-Aero, was carrying tourists, Russian news agencies TASS and Interfax reported. The rescue team said yesterday that there were no survivors.
Russia’s state news agency RIA Novosti reported, citing the Emergency Situations Ministry, that the helicopter likely crashed due to poor visibility and bad weather conditions. Rescuers spotted the remains of the helicopter in a hilly area on Sunday morning.
“According to preliminary data, the cause was a crew error. In poor visibility, the helicopter crashed into a hill,” a source from the Emergency Situations Ministry told TASS.
The remains of a missing tourist helicopter with 22 passengers on board were found in Russia’s Kamchatka region on Sunday.
The Russian Emergency Situations Ministry said the bodies of 17 people had been found and rescuers were still searching for the remaining residents.
The Mi-8 helicopter took off on Saturday but did not arrive at its destination at the scheduled time
The remains of the helicopter were found Sunday morning near a volcano in a hilly area
The helicopter took off near the Vachkazhets volcano in the Kamchatka region
According to operational services, the crew reported no malfunctions with the aircraft.
“The wreckage of the previously disappeared helicopter was discovered from the air. It is located at an altitude of 2,950 feet, near the place where it was last contacted,” the Ministry of Emergency Situations wrote on Telegram.
More than 60 specialists were deployed to search for the helicopter, along with 15 units of search equipment.
They searched for the missing plane in a cyclone, with fog and rain disrupting their work.
Aerial footage released by Russia’s Emergency Situations Ministry shows helicopter debris lying on a slope near the top of a large, wooded hill
The Mi-8 helicopter took off near the Vachkazhets volcano in the Kamchatka region on Saturday, but did not arrive at its destination on the scheduled date, Russia’s Federal Aviation Agency said in a statement earlier.
Rescue workers arrived at the scene of the devastating crash
The helicopter was in Russia’s far eastern Kamchatka region, officials said Sunday.
It was believed that there were 19 passengers and three crew members on board the helicopter at the time of the crash
According to the agency, there were believed to be 19 passengers and three crew members on board.
The Mi-8 is a twin-engine helicopter designed in the 1960s. It is widely used in Russia, where crashes are common, but also in neighboring countries and many other countries.
Russian media describe Vityaz-Aero as one of the largest airlines in the Kamchatka region.
After a helicopter crash in 2021 that killed eight people, authorities banned the company from carrying passengers pending an investigation into a possible violation of flight safety rules.
Vityaz-Aero is the largest of several local airlines flying tourists to the Kronotsky Reserve, a top tourist attraction with Russia’s only geyser basin.
Kamchatka, a pristine peninsula with numerous volcanoes, is known for its rugged beauty and rich flora and fauna.
