An Angara Airlines passenger plane crashed in Russia's far east on July 24, 2025, killing all 48 people aboard as it approached the remote town of Tynda. Authorities found the burning wreckage of the Antonov An-24 on a forested mountainside about 15 kilometers from the airport.
The flight had departed Blagoveshchensk for Tynda in the Amur region, close to Russia's border with China. It lost contact with air traffic controllers and disappeared from radar during its approach. The aircraft carried 42 passengers, including five children, and six crew members. No survivors were reported.
Access complicated the initial response. The wreckage lay in terrain without roads, and a rescue force of more than 100 people needed heavy machinery to cut a route through the forest. Images carried by Russian media showed smoke rising above the area where the aircraft came down.
Investigators opened a criminal case over a suspected breach of air traffic and air transport rules involving deaths through negligence. Russia's transport investigative committee said malfunction and human error were among the possibilities being considered. Those possibilities were not findings, and the evidence available on the event date did not establish a cause.
Amur regional governor Vasily Orlov offered condolences and declared three days of mourning, with flags ordered to half-mast. The deaths made the accident Russia's first fatal passenger aviation incident since an An-26 crashed near Palana in July 2021, killing 28 people, according to The Guardian.
The aircraft involved had been built in 1976. The An-24 is a twin-turboprop design developed by the Soviet Union's Antonov bureau in the late 1950s. Its ability to operate from basic runways has kept it in use on regional routes across remote parts of Russia and Central Asia, even as the fleet has aged.
The particular aircraft had experienced at least two reported technical problems since 2022: a generator failure that year and a radio communication issue in March 2025 that led a crew to request a return to parking. Those earlier events provide maintenance context but are not evidence that either problem caused the July crash. The Guardian also reported that sanctions had limited Russian airlines access to foreign parts and complicated replacement of ageing Soviet-era aircraft, a system-wide constraint rather than a finding about this flight.
On the facts available for July 24, the central sequence was clear: the flight lost contact near its destination, responders located wreckage well short of Tynda airport, and authorities confirmed that all passengers and crew had died. The investigation then turned to explaining why a routine regional approach ended on the mountainside.
