Roundup: Russia completes search operations at FlyDubai plane crash site

Russian workers on Sunday completed search and rescue operations at the site of the crash of a Boeing passenger plane of the Dubai Aviation Corporation (FlyDubai), Russian Transport Minister Maxim Sokolov said.

"The staff of the Russian Emergency Situations Ministry finished the search and rescue operation by 9:00 a.m. Moscow time (0600 GMT)," the Tass news agency quoted Sokolov as saying.

He said a meeting of the governmental commission, consisting of federal and regional authorities, was held to discuss how to deal with the aftermath of the accident.

"Today, during the daylight all necessary elements of the plane will be collected for a thorough analysis to make clear causes of the accident," he added.

"At about 6:00 p.m. local time (1500 GMT) works will begin on the runway to restore the equipment, so that the airport could begin working on Monday morning," Sokolov said..

Deputy Emergency Situations Minister Leonid Belyaev said the search area near the Rostov-on-Don airport, located in Russia's southwestern Rostov region, was extended to 15 hectares for recheck.

Belyaev noted that his ministry would continue identification of the bodies, collecting DNA samples and working with the families of the victims.

According to the Transport Ministry, medical experts had begun examining remains of the victims and identification work would take at least two weeks "if everything goes smoothly."

The Emergency Situations Ministry said it has contacted 76 relatives of the victims as of Sunday morning, while experts are collecting DNA samples of the relatives who have arrived in Rostov-on-Don.

Experts of the Interstate Aviation Committee (IAC), a supervising body overseeing the management of civil aviation in the Commonwealth of Independent States, have also arrived in the city for further investigation.

Meanwhile, experts of the Bureau of Enquiry and Analysis for Civil Aviation Safety of France and the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board are due to arrive for assistance of the crash investigation.

Early Sunday morning, the two flight recorders of the crashed plane were sent to Moscow and taken to the IAC for decoding, with participation of officials from the Air Accident Investigation Department of the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

Russian authorities said the aircraft was landing amid high winds and rain that reduced visibility, while the Russian Investigative Committee is considering several versions of the crash, including a crew mistake, technical failure and difficult weather conditions.

A source with the Russian Emergency Situations Ministry said the passenger jet came down nose-first practically vertically at an angle of 60 degrees, exploded when hitting the ground and caught fire. Bits of the plane and debris were strewn across the runway.

"A radius of the fragments' dispersion as well as their small sizes prove that the speed was very high -- over 400 km per hour," Tass quoted the source as saying.

"Even the most durable parts of the plane, the gear trucks made from magnesium, were crashed into pieces," the source said.

A delegation of FlyDubai, or the Dubai Aviation Corporation, has also arrived in Rostov-on-Don and begun working with experts of the IAC.

The low-cost airline said in a statement that a payment of 20,000 U.S. dollars per passenger would be made to the victims' families.

"At present, our priority is to identify and contact the families of those lost in Saturday's tragic accident and provide immediate support to those affected," said the statement.

The Boeing 737-800 passenger plane of FlyDubai, en route from the UAE city of Dubai to Rostov-on-Don, crashed at about 3:50 a.m. Moscow time (0050 GMT) Saturday at the Russian city's airport, killing all 62 people aboard. Endi