Tourist helicopter crashes killing everyone on board on trip to volcano

A tourist helicopter crashed into a forest after taking off from a volcano in eastern Russia on Saturday.

Domestic tourism is on the rise due to Western sanctions, and the active volcanoes, glaciers and geysers of Kamchatka make it a favourite destination.

Businesswoman and mother Nadezhda Gordinskaya was part of that trend, filling her Instagram with shots of dramatic landscapes from across Russia.

Now her posts are filled with comments from friends and fans mourning her death after a helicopter carrying 22 people crashed, killing everyone onboard.

Its burnt-out remains were found in a clearing on a forested slope 2,950ft high, near its last known location some 4,400 miles east of Moscow yesterday morning..

There were no signs of survivors in video footage of the flattened Mi-8T helicopter, released by search and rescue teams on Sunday.

Arseny Zamyatin, financial director of the Russian Football Union, equivalent of the Football Association, and his wife Polina were among the 19 tourists and three crew members onboard.

‘Our thoughts are with the relatives of Arseny and Polina’, the RFU said in a statement.

This isn’t the first of Vityaz-Aero’s helicopters to crash in this region, with eight people killed when their aircraft crashed into a lake three years ago.

Now the travel company’s owner Kirill Seregin appears to have died on Saturday’s flight, which had offered passengers a chance to see brown bears in their natural habitat.

It dropped off the radar just after taking off from the 5,085ft Vachkazhets volcano for a 15-mile journey east to Nikolaevka on Saturday.

The wreck was found near its last known location the following morning, Kamchatka Governor Vladimir Solodov said on Telegram.

But low clouds and strong winds have hampered search efforts, which recovered 17 bodies before being suspended until Monday morning, emergency ministry official, Ivan Lemikhov, said.

‘The land operation continues, all groups have been [given coordinates] of the debris site’, the governer said yesterday.

‘Everything is being done to get specialists at the site to establish all the details.’

A criminal case has now been opened into Vityaz-Aero, with investigators working to establish what caused the crash.

Thick fog is suspected to have caused a pilot error that led to the crash, Russia’s Interfax news agency reported.

Pilot Denis Bleshchik, 38, was described by colleagues as highly experienced with 12 years under his belt.

It is not the first Mi-8 helicopter operated Vityaz-Aero to crash in this sparsely populated area prone to harsh weather.

Eight people died and eight survived when one crashed and sank in a lake at Kronotsky Nature Reserve, further north along this peninsula on the northern edge of the Pacific Ocean.

Crash investigators found multiple safety breaches in that incident.

Mi-8 helicopters are still widely used in Russia six decades since they were first produced during the Soviet era.

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