“On the evening of Saturday, January 20, while in the airspace of Afghanistan (…), a Falcon 10 aircraft registered in the State Register of Civil Aircraft of the Russian Federation stopped communicating and disappeared from radar screens,” Russian civil aviation policeman Rossaviatsia explained in a statement. “According to preliminary information, there were six people on board the plane: four crew members and two passengers,” the source said.
Four people were found alive, while two others were still missing on Sunday, Russia’s Federal Civil Aviation Agency, Rossaviatsia, said. “The local ground search and rescue service found the Falcon 10 plane,” Rossaviatsia first indicated in a final press release.
“Of the six people who were on board the plane, four are estimated to be alive (they suffer from various injuries), and the fate of two people is being verified,” Rossaviatsia continued. The Afghan authorities have also confirmed this toll on their side.
“The pilot has been found,” we can read in a press release from the Afghan Ministry of Transport and Aviation on X (formerly Twitter). “According to the pilot, four people on board, including him, are alive. The search team (…) is looking for the other people,” he continued.
According to Rossaviatsia, the Falcon 10 in question, a business jet, “was built by the French company Dassault Aviation in 1978. The aircraft is owned by Athletic Group LLC and an individual.”
According to the Russian press agency Ria Novosti, the aircraft was carrying out a private medical flight between Gaya (India) – Tashkent (Uzbekistan) – Zhukovskyi (Russia), with on board a “bedridden patient in serious condition” and her husband who had paid for the flight, these two people being Russian citizens according to this source.
Russian investigators announced the opening of an investigation into “violation of safety rules (…) causing the death of two or more people through negligence.”
According to the Belarusian television channel Belsat, the occupants of the plane are Anna and Anatoly Yevsiukov, who chartered this private plane after the woman fell ill during a vacation in Thailand.
An official from the Information Department of Badakhshan province in Afghanistan, Zabihullah Amiri, for his part explained to AFP that he had “been informed by villagers” that a plane had crashed in this region, bordering the Tajikistan, China and Pakistan.
The accident occurred in a mountainous area, difficult to access, of this province crossed by the Hindu Kouch massif, with peaks reaching more than 7,000 meters. The accident area “is about an eight-hour drive” from the provincial capital of Faizabad, Amiri said.