Investigators report Flydubai Boeing circled over Rostov airfield for 2.5 hours before crash

Published March 19, 2016 at 2:15 pm

A picture taken on May 18, 2009 shows the first of flydubai's fifty Boeing 737-800 Next Generation aircraft sitting on the tarmac at Dubai airport. All sixty-one people on board a flydubai Boeing 737 were killed when the plane crashed and burst in flames as it was landing in Rostov-on-Don.

Photo by AFP

The Flydubai Boeing 737 that crashed in Rostov-on-Don on Saturday morning had been circling over the airfield for 2.5 hours before attempting to land, Oksana Kovrizhnaya, a spokesperson for the Russian Investigative Committee's Southern Transport Investigative Department, told journalists on Saturday.

“The plane en route from Dubai to Rostov-on-Don was to land at 1:10 a.m. Moscow time. It remained in the air above Rostov-on-Don until 3:40 a.m. Moscow time because of meteorological conditions,” Kovrizhnaya said.

The crash killed a total of 62 people.