At least five persons were killed and three injured as a civilian Antonov An-12 transport aircraft made a crash landing in a waste lot outside of the Lviv Airport early on Oct. 4.
According to the country’s deputy minister for infrastructure Yuriy Lavreniuk, the plane crashed after running out of fuel.
The Antonov An-12 belonging to Ukraine Airalliance airline was reportedly conducting a cargo shipping flight between the Spanish city of Vigo and Istanbul, with a planned pit stop in Lviv. 8 persons were reported to have been on board, including 7 crew members and one person escorting the cargo.
According to Ukraine’s Emergency Service, the aircraft went off radars at around 7 a.m. Kyiv time, 13.7 kilometers away from the Lviv Airport during the landing approach.
At 7.29 a.m., one of the crewmembers went on air and reported an emergency crash landing onto the ground. Some 15 minutes later, the damaged aircraft was found in a field near the village of Sokolnyky 1.5 kilometers to the Lviv Airport runway.
The three injured, all of them being crewmembers, were hospitalized in Lviv. As many as 68 emergency response workers were engaged at the scene.
Following the crash, the Lviv Airport immediately closed its runway strip through 10.00 a.m. local time, and two flights bound for Lviv from Sharm El Sheikh and Dnipro were redirected to Boryspil Airport and Ivan0-Frankivsk respectively.
After the Lviv Airport resumed accommodating flights, both planes eventually brought their passengers to the city.
Three more flights bound for Berlin, Hurghada, and Antalya were delayed by between 1 and 3 hours.
Later in the day, the country’s National Police said a criminal probe was initiated into probable violations of air traffic safety rules.
“Sanctions (for such crimes) envisage up to 10 years of imprisonment,” the police said.
