Five people were killed as a Russian business jet crashed near the Minsk National Airport, 20 miles east of the Belarusian capital city, on Monday night.
The Hawker-125 executive jet took off from the Vnukovo-3 airport in Moscow at 8:06 p.m. and disappeared from radar screens at 9:30 p.m. when approaching the Minsk airport.
The press office of the Belarusian emergency management ministry said that there had been two passengers and three crew members on board.
One more passenger was reportedly scheduled to be on the flight, but he missed it.
The plane belonged to S-Air, a Moscow-based company that runs a fleet of luxuriously appointed private jets. The wreckage of the plane was found near the village of Pyatsihodka in the Smalyavichy district, a mile away from the landing runway, at 10:44 p.m.
The head of the S-Air airline, Marat Romashkin, and a certain Pavel Malyshev were reportedly on board the plane.
According to preliminary reports, the plane failed to make the landing on the first attempt and was lost by traffic controllers following the second attempt to land in normal visibility and satisfactory, although rainy, weather conditions.
S-Air is a small private company, which provides charter services to top-level executives and government officials. Its fleet comprises several Yak-42D, Tu-134, Yak-40, Hawker-125-700B and Hawker-125-800B planes.
