The passenger jet hits the tarmac in a near-vertical dive at high speed and explodes in a giant fireball, lighting up the night sky.
Chilling video broadcast on Russian television has revealed the moment a Boeing 737 plane crashed at an airport runway in Kazan, 720km east of Moscow, killing all 50 people on board.
The brief video was taken by an airport security camera and confirmed as authentic by the emergency press service at Kazan airport.
Burning wreckage of the Tatarstan Airlines jet littered the tarmac and fire crews spent hours extinguishing the blaze on Sunday night.
The plane, which was flying from Moscow, crashed while making a second attempt at landing.
It was not immediately clear why the crew was unable to land on their first try in good weather, but the incident could be linked to a failure of the plane's systems or a pilot error, Associated Press reports.
It could take weeks to identify the remains of the 44 passengers and six crew members on board.
But it has been confirmed that the son of the provincial governor and the chief of the local branch of Russia's main security agency were among the victims.
Investigators have found both of the plane's black boxes but said they were damaged.
Tatarstan Airlines has had a good safety record but appears to have run into financial problems recently.
Its personnel went on strike in September over back wages and the Kazan airport authority claims the carrier has failed to pay outstanding debts for servicing its planes.
Source: ACB News
Author: Erin Tennant, Approving editor: Matthew Henry
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