The Tu-154 jet owned by St. Petersburg-based Pulkovo Airlines was flying from the Russian resort of Anapa on the Black Sea to St. Petersburg via Ukrainian territory and crashed 45 kilometers (30 miles) outside Donetsk in eastern Ukraine near the Russian border.
"The airliner en route from Anapa to St. Petersburg asked to make an emergency landing, but disappeared from radars at 2:30 p.m. [local time] (3:30 p.m. Moscow time, 11:30 a.m. GMT)," said the Ukrainian Emergency Situations Ministry.
So far 30 bodies have been recovered from the three-engine plane, but Ukrainian emergencies services also said a blaze at the crash site was hampering recovery efforts.
Pulkovo Airlines, which had an excellent safety record prior to Tuesday's tragedy, said 39 children under the age of 12 and six under the age of two had been among the passengers.
The company also said the plane, built in 1992, was in good working order and the pilot was experienced with over 9,000 flying hours under his belt.
Stormy Weather
Emergency services moved immediately to quell fears that terrorists could have targeted the Tu-154, the mainstay of the Russian air fleet, by saying that stormy weather was likely to have caused the tragedy.
"A terrorist attack is ruled out," Irina Andriyanova said. "Ukrainian sources said the plane was caught in a thunderstorm."
Russian television's Channel One said citing Ukrainian sources that the plane had caught fire at an altitude of about 33,000 feet (10,000 meters) and the crew had decided to make an emergency landing after sending an SOS signal.
A spokesperson for the emergencies services told Russian television channel RTR that the plane gave a SOS signal at 15:37 Moscow time [11.37 GMT] and vanished from the screens two minutes later. The airline said the crew had sent four mayday signals before contact was lost, three at 38,600 feet (11,700 meters) and one two minutes later at 10,000 ft (3,000 meters)
The plane was expected to land in St. Petersburg, where doctors and psychologists are now attending to distraught relatives of the passengers, at 17:45 local time (13:45 GMT).
Eyewitnesses told Russia's NTV television channel that the plane was intact when it hit the ground. Others suggested the jet had failed to protrude the landing gear.
Recovery efforts
The emergency services in Ukraine have said the bad weather had hampered what had already become a recovery rather than a rescue effort.
A spokeswoman for the Russian Emergency Ministry said the operation would continue into the night and firefighters at the scene had tackled the blaze.
"The fire has virtually been extinguished," Irina Andrianova said. "Rescuers are recovering the bodies."
The spokeswoman added that three Russian helicopters were preparing to fly to the scene.
Series of accidents
President Putin has been informed about the accident and has ordered Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov to set up a commission into crash. Russian rescuers are also on stand-by to fly to the area.
The tragic incident is one in a series of Russian crashes in the past few years.
On July 9, an A-310 airbus owned by S-7 Airline crashed killing 124 people on the way from Moscow to Irkutsk, the home airport for popular tourist destination Lake Baikal in Siberia. It veered off the runway upon landing and caught fire after hitting a concrete wall and plowing into garages.
On May 3, another Airbus operated by Armenian carrier Armavia crashed as it was preparing to land at the airport of Adler, off Russia's Black Sea coast. All 113 passengers and crew died.
In October 2001, Siberia Airline (now S-7) Tu-154 en route from Tel Aviv to Novosibirsk in Siberia was accidentally shot down by a Ukrainian missile S-200, killing 78 people onboard.
In July 2001, another Tu-154 crashed near Irkutsk, claiming the lives of 145 people.
