Mi-8 helicopter with 7 people aboard goes missing in Trans-Baikal area

A Mi-8 helicopter with seven people aboard went missing in Russia’s Trans-Baikal area, a source in regional law-enforcement agencies said on Sunday.

‘The helicopter failed to establish contact at 12:45 p.m. Moscow time. After that an emergency location beacon started to send signals,” the source said.

The helicopter, which belongs to the Siberian branch of Russia’s Emergencies Ministry, was performing a flight over forests in the south of the region.

The location of the helicopter is unknown. A search for the helicopter has been organized, the source said.

Also on Sunday, an Antonov An-2 biplane crashed in the Krasnodar Territory in south Russia, injuring a pilot. The plane crashed at about 12 hours in the afternoon on Sunday near the village of Zasovskaya. The pilot was taken to a district hospital.

Russia has been hit by a string of recent fatal disasters involving aircraft.

On September 7, a Yak-42 plane crashed near the Volga city of Yaroslavl shortly after takeoff killing forty-four people and wiping out the Lokomotiv ice hockey team. The team was flying to the Belarus capital of Minsk for its first match of the Kontinental Hockey League season.

In June, the RusAir Tupolev Tu-134 plane crashed in northwest Russia's Karelia region killing 44 people.