In this screen grab provided by the Life.ru, the wreckage of a AN-148 plane is seen in Stepanovskoye village, about 40 kilometers (25 miles) from the Domodedovo airport, Russia, Sunday, Feb. 11, 2018.... (Associated Press) 
 
 In this screen grab provided by the Life.ru, the wreckage of a AN-148 plane is seen in Stepanovskoye village, about 40 kilometers (25 miles) from the Domodedovo airport, Russia, Sunday, Feb. 11, 2018. Russia's Emergencies Ministry says a passenger plane has crashed near Moscow and fragments of it have... (Associated Press) 
 
 MOSCOW (AP) — A Russian passenger plane carrying 71 people crashed near Moscow shortly after taking off from one of the city's airports Sunday. The country's transportation minister said there were no survivors. 
 
 The Saratov Airlines regional jet disappeared from radar screens a few minutes after departing from Domodedovo Airport en route to Orsk, a city some 1,500 kilometers (1,000 miles) southeast of Moscow. 
 
 Fragments from the Antonov An-148 airliner were found in the Ramenskoye area, about 40 kilometers (25 miles) from the airport. Footage on state television showed them strewn across a snowy field with no buildings nearby. No on the ground casualties were reported. 
 
 Transport Minister Maxim Sokolov said Sunday afternoon that "judging by everything, no one has survived this crash." He did not give the number of people on board, but Russian news reports said the plane carried 65 passengers and six crew members. 
 
 Russia's Investigative Committee said all possible causes were being explored. 
 
 Russian President Vladimir Putin put off a planned trip to Sochi in order to closely monitor the investigation. Putin was to meet Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas on Monday in the Black Sea resort, where the president has an official residence. 
 
 Instead, Abbas will meet with Putin in Moscow in the latter part of Monday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told Russian news agencies. 
 
 The An-148 was developed by Ukraine's Antonov company in the early 2000s and manufactured in both Ukraine and Russia. Russian state news agency Tass said the plane that crashed had been flying since 2010, with a two-year break because of a shortage of parts. 
 
 The plane was ordered by Rossiya Airlines, a subsidiary of Aeroflot, but was put into storage during 2015-2017 because of the parts shortage. Tass reported that it re-entered service for Saratov Airlines in February 2017. 
 
 Shabby equipment and poor supervision had plagued Russian civil aviation for years after the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, but its safety record has improved markedly in recent years. 
 
 The last large-scale crash in Russia occurred on Dec. 25, 2016, when a Tu-154 operated by the Russian Defense Ministry on its way to Syria crashed into the Black Sea minutes after takeoff from the southern Russian city of Sochi. All 92 people on board were killed. 
 
 In March 2016, a Boeing 737-800 flown by FlyDubai crashed while landing at Rostov-on-Don, killing all 62 people aboard. 
 
 An onboard bomb destroyed a Russian Metrojet airliner soon after taking off from Egypt's Sharm al-Sheikh resort, killing 224 people in October 2015. 
 
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 This version has been corrected to show the 2015 Metrojet bombing killed 224 people, not 244. ||||| Saratov Airlines flight 6W703 crashes after take off from Domodedovo airport, leaving no survivors 
 
 More than 70 people died when a Russian passenger plane crashed shortly after take-off from Moscow’s Domodedovo airport on Sunday, officials say. 
 
 Saratov Airlines flight 6W703 was heading to Orsk, a city near Russia’s border with Kazakhstan, when it went down near the town of Argunovo, about 50 miles south-east of Moscow. Witnesses said the plane, an Antonov An-148 aircraft, was in flames as it fell from the sky. 
 
 The plane was carrying 71 people – 65 passengers and six crew members. Emergency services officials told the Tass news agency there were no survivors. Wreckage from the plane was reported to be spread over a large area and it was unclear if there were any casualties among people on the ground. 
 
 Russia’s gazeta.ru website cited unnamed investigators as saying the pilot had reported a technical malfunction and asked for clearance for an emergency landing at the nearby Zhukovsky International airport. Officials have not confirmed the report. Other reports said one of the plane’s engines may have exploded before the crash. 
 
 Facebook Twitter Pinterest Russian emergency vehicles arriving at the site of the crash. Photograph: Dmitry Serebryakov/AFP/Getty Images 
 
 The transport ministry said several causes were being considered, including weather conditions and human error. 
 
 
 
 The flight-tracking site Flightradar24 tweeted that the seven-year-old passenger jet had gone into a steep descent five minutes after take-off, after which it had vanished from radars. 
 
 The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, expressed his condolences to the families and friends of those who died in the crash and ordered the government to set up a special commission to investigate. 
 
 A source from Russia’s emergency services told Interfax the 71 people on board had no chance of survival. 
 
 Russian state television aired a video of the crash site, showing parts of the wreckage in the snow. Russia has experienced record snowfalls in recent days and visibility was reportedly poor. 
 
 The Russian-made plane had been bought by Saratov from another Russian airline a year ago. 
 
 Russian media reported that the emergency services had been unable to reach the crash site by road and rescue workers had walked to the scene on foot. Emergency services said that more than 150 rescue workers had been deployed. 
 
 The Russian transport minister was on his way to the crash site, agencies reported. The transport ministry said several causes for the crash were being considered, including weather conditions and human error. 
 
 The governor of the Orenburg region, which the plane was flying to, told Russian media more than 60 people on the plane were from the region. 
 
 Local media website Ural56.ru in the Orenburg region showed footage of distressed relatives at Orsk airport, where the plane was due to land. Andrei Odintsov, the mayor of Orsk told Russian state television that six psychologists and four ambulances with medics were working with the relatives in the small airport. 
 
 Plane crashes are common in Russia, where airlines often operate ageing aircraft in testing conditions. A light aircraft crashed in November in the far east of the country, killing six people on board. 
 
 A military plane carrying Russia’s Red Army Choir crashed after taking off from the Black Sea resort of Sochi in December 2016, killing all 92 people on board. The choir had been due to give a concert to Russian troops in Syria. Pilot error was blamed for the crash. 
 
 In March 2016, all 62 passengers died when a FlyDubai jet crashed in bad weather during an aborted landing at Rostov-on-Don airport. ||||| MOSCOW (Reuters) - A Russian passenger plane crashed near Moscow soon after take-off on Sunday, killing all 71 people on board, and investigators said they were looking at all possible causes. 
 
 Temperatures were around minus 5 degrees Celsius with periodic snowfall when the short-haul AN-148 operated by Saratov Airlines took off for the city of Orsk in Orenburg region, about 900 miles (1,500 km) southeast of the capital. 
 
 President Vladimir Putin offered condolences to those who had lost relatives and ordered a special investigative commission to be set up. 
 
 “According to preliminary information, nobody survived,” the Kremlin said in a statement. 
 
 The office of Russia’s transport prosecutor said all 71 people on board had been killed. Transport Minister Maxim Sokolov confirmed there were no survivors and said DNA tests would be needed to identify the dead. 
 
 TV images of the crash site showed wreckage of the plane, including at least one engine, lying in fields covered with thick snow. 
 
 Helicopters were at the scene as well as rescuers on snowmobiles. An official of the Emergency Situations Ministry said two bodies and a flight recorder had been found. 
 
 Debris and human remains were spread over a radius of a kilometer from the crash site, investigators said. 
 
 They said they had opened a criminal case into the incident. Among the possible causes they listed were weather conditions, human error and the plane’s technical condition. No distress signals had been received from the crew. 
 
 The plane, manufactured in 2010, had been carrying 65 passengers and six crew. It disappeared from radar screens shortly after taking off from Moscow’s Domodedovo airport. 
 
 Interfax news agency said one Swiss national had been among the passengers. 
 
 Elena Voronova, a spokeswoman for Saratov Airlines, said there had been no concerns about the technical condition of the plane, which went into service with her company in 2016. 
 
 Slideshow (11 Images) 
 
 Images broadcast on state TV showed relatives waiting at Orsk airport, some with their heads in their hands. 
 
 The city’s mayor told the Rossiya 24 TV channel a team of psychologists was working at the airport to comfort people.
– The unfortunate big development after Sunday's crash of a passenger jet outside Moscow comes from the country's transportation minister. "Judging by everything, no one has survived this crash," says Maxim Sokolov. Here is what is known: The victims: Sixty-five passengers and six crew members were aboard the plane, and the BBC reports that most of the passengers were from the Russian region of Orenburg in the Ural mountains. The cause: Way too early to tell. Investigators are looking into weather conditions (it was about 23 degrees Fahrenheit), human error, and the technical condition of the Antonov An-148 airliner, reports Reuters. But Russia's Investigative Committee wasn't ruling anything out at this point, reports the AP. After takeoff: The plane went down shortly after takeoff from Domodedovo Airport en route to Orsk, about 1,000 miles southeast of Moscow. Fragments of the plane were scattered about a large, remote region near the village of Argunovo. Engine explosion? The Guardian cites unconfirmed reports in Russian media that the captain had requested permission for an emergency landing at a nearby airport after reporting a technical malfunction. Witnesses reported seeing the plane in flames as it fell, leading to speculation that an engine had exploded before the crash. End of streak: This is the first crash of a commercial airliner in more than a year, following a sterling aviation record in 2017, notes the BBC. Putin: He offered his condolences to the families of victims and delayed a trip to the Black Sea resort of Sochi, where he planned to meet Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas on Monday.