Far East Transportation Prosecutor’s Office/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images
A Russian passenger plane that crashed on Thursday was nearly 50 years old and had its service life extended to 2036, according to state media.
The Antonov An-24, a twin-propeller aircraft that seats 43 passengers, disappeared at around 1 pm local time in Russia’s Amur region, regional transport officials said in a Telegram statement.
Russian federal air officials said 42 passengers and seven crew members were on board when the plane crashed on approach to an airport at Tynda, a city in Amur.
Regional officials said the plane had failed to touch down once at Tynda and crashed during its second approach.
Flying conditions were suitable for passenger aircraft, and no distress calls had been issued at the time of the crash, state media outlet TASS reported.
It later wrote that a rescue helicopter observing the crash site found no signs of survivors. As of press time, however, the latest update from Russia’s emergency ministry said ground rescuers hadn’t reached the site due to “difficult mountainous terrain.”
The plane, operated by Siberian-headquartered Angara Airlines, was manufactured in 1976, making it 49 years old, according to state media outlet TASS.
TASS reported that in 2021, this particular An-24’s airworthiness certificate was extended to 2036, which would have allowed it to fly passenger journeys up to 60 years after its maiden flight.
An open-source Russian plane registry listed the crashed An-24 as entering operations in February of 1976, making it 49 years and five months old.
To compare, major international and US airlines typically phase out aircraft that have been in service for over 35 years.
In January, Angara was also one of two Russian airlines that highlighted a need to extend the service life of its An-24s, saying that Western sanctions had limited access to maintenance workers and spare parts for much of its fleet.
“We are today working in a market in which there are no alternatives to the An-24 and An-26,” Angara deputy CEO Sergei Zorin said at the time, per Reuters.
Aviation authorities signed a contract in March to push the aircraft’s service life to 60 years.
State media also reported on Thursday that the crashed An-24 had sustained damage and equipment failures at least three times in the past seven years.
Citing Russia’s federal air transport agency, TASS reported that the plane had rolled off a runway in 2018 and clipped a lightning pole with its left wing. The aircraft also returned to an airport in 2019 after its generator failed, while one of its radio sets was reported to have malfunctioned on the tarmac in May 2025.
Its approach warning system was also activated once in 2022, per TASS.
Still, the state media outlet reported preliminary findings from emergency services that crew error caused the crash, though it did not specify how authorities arrived at that conclusion.
Svetlana Petrenko, a spokeswoman for Russia’s Investigative Committee, said on Thursday that her office would launch a criminal investigation into the crash.
Angara Airlines did not respond to a request for comment sent outside regular business hours by Business Insider.
The post Russia tried stretching the service life of its aging An-24 planes past 50 years. One just crashed with dozens on board. appeared first on Business Insider.
