Russia Plane Crash: Investigators Find Black Box
Investigators have found the black box from a passenger plane that nose-dived and exploded into a fireball in southern Russia, killing all 62 people on board.
The Boeing 737-800, operated by budget airline flydubai, crashed while trying to land at Rostov-on-Don airport early on Saturday.
The plane was pulverised into tiny fragments, but experts managed to find both of the flight recorders undamaged.
The Investigative Committee of Russia said it was probing three possible causes of the crash: pilot error, technical failure or bad weather conditions.
Flydubai CEO Ghaith Al Ghaith warned it was "too early" to determine why flight FZ981 crashed.
"An investigation is being conducted in cooperation with the Russian authorities and we are waiting to see the results," he told a news conference.
A strong wind warning was in place and it was reportedly raining hard at the time of the crash.
Vasily Golubev, governor of the Rostov region, said: "By all appearances the cause of the air crash was strongly gusting winds approaching hurricane weather."
He said the plane crashed about 250 metres (800 feet) short of the runway.
The aircraft had been forced to abandon an initial attempt to land, Russia's emergency ministry said.
Other flights had been diverted to Krasnodar airport, 300km (186 miles) south of Rostov-on-Don, due to the poor weather.
The aircraft was in a mid-air holding pattern and had been circling around the area for about two hours before making another attempt to land.
Its wing hit the ground on its second landing attempt and burst into flames, the Rostov region's emergency ministry said.
Grainy CCTV footage showed the aircraft going down at a steep angle and exploding in a huge fireball.
Some Russian aviation experts said the steep descent seemed to indicate that the crash was not caused by the strong wind.
"It was an uncontrollable fall," Sergei Kruglikov, a veteran Russian pilot, told Russian state television.
Most of the 55 passengers on board the airliner, which was flying from Dubai, were Russian, most likely returning from holidays.
Eight Ukrainians, two Indians and one Uzbek were also on the flight, the airline confirmed. Four children were among the dead.
Flydubai said the crew was made up of five men and two women.
The pilots were from Cyprus and Spain, while the cabin crew included two Russians and citizens of Seychelles, Colombia and Kyrgyzstan.
Flydubai has a good safety record. This crash is its first since it began operating in 2009.
