KUALA LUMPUR, July 17. /ITAR-TASS/. Malaysia Airlines has confirmed that the Boeing 777 jet, which crashed in eastern Ukraine Thursday afternoon while performing a flight from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, had 295 people aboard, including 280 passengers and fifteen crewmembers.

Communications with the jet were lost when it was at a distance of some 50 kilometers away from the Ukrainian-Russian border.

The airliner took off from Amsterdam at 12:15 Central European Summer Time (10:15 UTC) and was scheduled to land in Kuala Lumpur at 06:10 Malaysia Time on Friday.

It was expected to enter Russian airspace at 17:20 Moscow Standard Time (13:20 UTC).