An Airbus 310-300, owned by Novosibirsk-based S7, formerly Sibir, crashed early Sunday at the Irkutsk airport, about 3,000 miles east of Moscow, killing more than 100 people when it was making a routine flight from the capital.
The ministry said the Tu-154 liner carrying 130 passengers and nine crew members was flying from Vladivostok in Russia's Far East to the Urals city of Yekaterinburg with a planned stop in Irkutsk.
"The liner headed from Irkutsk to Yekaterinburg at 10.42 a.m. Moscow time [6.42 a.m. GMT] and twenty minutes later the commander reported a tail engine failure," a ministry spokesman said, adding that the commander had decided to make an emergency landing in Irkutsk.
A Tu-154 liner crashed near Irkutsk in 2001 killing all 145 people on board.
