A Boeing 737 owned by Tatarstan Airlines crashed on Nov. 17 as it tried to land in Kazan Airport, leaving 50 dead.
According to Agence France Presse, the plane flying from Moscow crashed at Kazan Airport as it tried to land for the second time. Irina Rosius, spokesperson for the Ministry of Emergency Situations of Russia, confirmed that everyone on the plane lost their lives: 44 passengers and 6 crew members. No children were on board.
Reuters reported that the son of the President of the Russian Republic of Tatarstan, Irek Minnijanov, 23, and the regional chief of Russia's intelligence service FSB, died in the accident, although this information has not been corroborated by Russian authorities so far.
Russian President Vladimir Putin expressed his condolences to the families of the victims and ordered the urgent creation of a commission in charge of investigating the causes of the accident.
The crashed plane had taken off from Moscow's Domodedovo Airport, 800 kilometers west of Kazan and the causes of the accident have not been revealed yet. However, reports have placed an emphasis on the safety issues and the bad condition of Russian planes that have been involved in similar accidents before.
Reuters highlighted that Russia and the former Soviet Republics have the worst air traffic safety record, with a total amount of accidents almost three times larger than the global average in 2011, according to data from the International Air Transport Association.
The use of old planes in disrepair has been one of the reasons consistently found by specialists to be responsible for fatal accidents in Russia.
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