Cargo aircraft crashes over Bay killing one in Bangladesh

Dhaka: A cargo aircraft on Wednesday crashed into the Bay of Bengal near the sea resort town of Cox’s Bazar killing at least one of its crew while officials said the pilot and the co-pilot remained missing.

Civil aviation officials at the beach town airport told newsmen the aircraft, carrying shrimp fry to western Jessore district, crashed into the sea around half a kilometre off the shoreline soon after it took off at 9.40am.

“Before the crash the pilot sent us a message saying one of the two engines of the plane went out of order … we prepared the airport for its emergency landing but the aircraft could not make its way back here,” the beach town airport’s manager Sadhan Kumar told newsman.

An official of the private True Aviation cargo service which hired the aircraft for shrimp fry transportation said flight engineer of the aircraft Kulisn Andriy was declared dead by doctors while flight navigator Vlodymyr Kultanov was being treated at the Cox’s Bazar sadar Hospital with critical wounds.

He added that all the four on-board were Ukrainians while fishermen near the shoreline rescued the two to the facility.

“But pilot Murad Gafarov and co-pilot Ivan Patrov are still missing … we don’t know if they are still inside the aircraft or could make their way out of it,” official of the aviation service Hashmat Jahan told journalists at the scene.

TV footages showed navy and coastguard ships joined the fishing boats in carrying out a search campaign in the vicinity of the accident scene, just a kilometre off the shoreline.