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No plane found after alleged emergency landing

The information about an alleged emergency landing of an An-26 plane is not true
Archive AP/Rafiq Maqbool
Archive AP/Rafiq Maqbool

YEKATERINBURG, November 8 (Itar-Tass) - The information about an alleged emergency landing of an An-26 plane in the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Area, northwestern Siberia, is not true, Federal Air Transport Agency (Rosaviation) official Sergei Izvolsky confirmed to Itar-Tass on Friday.

"We believe as before that the information is not true. There is no plane with such an identification number as was reported," he said.

The Russian Emergencies Ministry's spokeswoman Irina Rossius also told Itar-Tass on Friday that the report about an alleged emergency landing of an An-26 plane was not confirmed.

Yamal rescuers, after going 90 km of the route, reached the coordinates reported by "radio pirates" and did not find any plane or traces of an emergency landing. "There were no plane and no people at the site of the coordinates," Rossius said.

"It is a story out of the ordinary. Nevertheless, rescuers have done everything they must do in such situation," she added.

Rossius said earlier that the Emergencies Ministry had received information about an alleged emergency landing of an An-26 of Tyumen's air services. Tyumen flight managers received the information, and the radio bureau at Roshchino airport in Tyumen reported about the plane incident to the Emergencies Ministry's Yamalo-Nenets regional department, she said. In accordance with the regulations, rescuers were placed on alert.

A group of ten rescuers in cross-country vehicles for about 12 hours went across the tundra among snowdrifts to the reported site, 90 km from the city of Nadym, the Yamalo-Nenets region.

On November 7, at 15:30 Moscow time, the Crisis Management Centre of the Emergencies Ministry's Yamalo-Nenets regional department received the report that an An-26 plane with 22 passengers and four crewmembers aboard had made an emergency landing in the Nadym district.

It is supposed to be such "a joke of radio pirates", an air traffic control source told Itar-Tass. Some pirates had just wedged into the air on the special radio frequency used for distress signals.

Law-enforcement authorities are investigating the incident, the source said.