All passengers and crew perished in the crash. The aircraft, which had been in operation for nearly half a century, has reignited discussions about the permissible service life of outdated Soviet-era aircraft, especially given the continued lack of suitable modern replacements for models like the An-24.
A passenger An-24 aircraft crashed in the Amur Region. According to the Investigative Committee, there were no survivors. On board were 43 passengers and six crew members.
The “Angara” airline`s aircraft was operating a flight from Khabarovsk to Tynda. After a two-hour delay in Blagoveshchensk for a technical stop, the An-24 commenced its landing approach in Tynda amidst dense, ten-point cloud cover and challenging mountainous terrain. Following an attempt to go around for a second landing attempt, contact with the aircraft was lost. Notably, prior to this, the crew had not reported any issues. Wreckage of the aircraft was found 15 kilometers from Tynda.
Andrey Litvinov, a commander of an Airbus A320 for Aeroflot, commented on the possible causes of the crash:
“The weather was indeed bad there; they could well have hit a hill while going around. And then, due to bad weather, it`s quite possible they deviated from the landing trajectory. Such cases have happened. We need to understand if there was a technical failure, maybe an engine failed—we don`t know yet. It was undergoing technical maintenance in Blagoveshchensk, I believe, and departed with a two-hour delay.”
“Can one fail to notice a hill in such visibility?”
“If visibility is poor and they deviated from the landing trajectory, then yes. Because the equipment on the An-24 is not the same as on Boeings and Airbuses; there, everything still flies by pointers, like our great-grandfathers used to fly. The navigation precision is not the same as on Airbuses and Boeings.”
The crashed An-24 was 49 years old. In 2018, it damaged a wing at Bodaibo airport in the Irkutsk region. According to “Rusline” airline, which was operating the aircraft at the time, snow on the runway was the cause. The An-24 crash near Tynda is the second incident involving “Angara” airline`s aircraft of this type in recent months. On May 26, in Kirensk airport, Irkutsk region, the front landing gear broke during landing, causing the aircraft to roll off the runway. No one was injured then. However, after the incident, Rostransnadzor conducted an inspection of the carrier and found serious violations in the technical maintenance of the aircraft.
Roman Gusarov, Editor-in-Chief of the Avia.ru portal, explains how such inspections are conducted:
“Federal authorities, represented by Rosaviatsia, Rostransnadzor, and perhaps the transport prosecutor`s office, periodically inspect airlines. The inspection covers a wide range of areas — starting, of course, from technical condition to personnel training systems, qualifications, and much more. Supervisory bodies, of course, do not delve into every aircraft, do not unscrew and check every part, but rather check whether scheduled technical work has been carried out in a timely and proper manner. If we are talking about the technical condition of aircraft, everything is fully checked at the documentation level. And if, as they say, there are no remarks — everything is great, then, accordingly, the airline continues to operate.”
Angara`s fleet consists of 11 An-24 aircraft. As the carrier`s Deputy General Director Sergey Zorin told Reuters last year, the company had asked the government to extend the service life of old Soviet aircraft because there was nothing to replace them with.
Aviation expert, PhD in Engineering, and former Sukhoi Design Bureau designer Vadim Lukashevich comments:
“An-24 and An-26 aircraft are already 50 years old, and with normal operation, they have exceeded all resource exhaustion deadlines, and they should have been decommissioned within the last three to five years. The problem is that there is nothing to replace them with, because the civil aircraft, that is, the passenger An-24, should be replaced by the Il-114, which is still undergoing tests for several years now and, in general, has not yet been certified. That is, we are told every time that it will appear next year, but a new time comes, and all these deadlines shift. Our deadlines are constantly moving to the right. Therefore, I do not rule out that next year, in 2026, we will be told that it will enter service in 2027. That is, this is a chronic disease of the Russian aviation industry.”
Anton Alikhanov, Head of the Ministry of Industry and Trade, announced that serial deliveries of Il-114 aircraft are planned to begin in August of next year. However, it remains unclear how much time will be needed to replace nearly fifty old An-24s still in operation in Russia with new Il-114s.
Rupert Blackwood 
Clement Ashworth