The captain of the An-24 plane that crash-landed in Donetsk International Airport, Serhiy Miloshenko, has said that thick fog was the possible cause of the crash.
"We were descending to a certain height.... There was bad weather – thick fog. The visibility of the runway was poor, to be more precise, it was not visible at all. Everything was all right with the engine," Channel 5 quoted Miloshenko, who is undergoing treatment in a Donetsk hospital, as saying.
A TV reporter also noted that among the possible causes of the accident were human error and the technical condition of the aircraft.
On Thursday morning it was reported that the plane's wing struck a ten-meter meteorological tower and then overturned and fell to the ground. The plane's fuselage broke in half.
As reported, the An-24 aircraft of South Airlines on flight from Odesa to Donetsk overshot the runway at Donetsk Sergey Prokofiev International Airport on Wednesday evening. The aircraft overturned and the aircraft's fuselage broke. A total of 52 people were on board the aircraft, including eight crewmembers.
Five people were killed, and nine were hospitalized.
It was a charter flight, and all the passengers were football fans heading for Donetsk to watch Shakhtar Donetsk play Borussia Dortmund.
A criminal case has been opened into the crash on charges of violating the air safety rules that resulted in the death of people. Ukraine's Donetsk Region Prosecutor's Office is in charge of the inquiry.
