The­re will be updates (see bot­tom end of this artic­le) as fur­ther infor­ma­ti­on beco­mes available.

A Rus­si­an MI-8 heli­c­op­ter cra­s­hed near Barents­burg and fell into the sea in Isfjord. The heli­c­op­ter was on the way from Pyra­mi­den to Barents­burg with 8 per­sons on board.

The emer­gen­cy call from the air­port tower Lon­gye­ar­by­en was recei­ved at 15.35 local time by the emer­gen­cy respon­se cent­re North Nor­way. Nor­we­gi­an search and res­cue (SAR) forces are on loca­ti­on with heli­c­op­ter and ships. The crash site is in the Isfjord, 2-3 kilo­me­t­res away from Heerod­den, the Rus­si­an heli­c­op­ter base at Barents­burg.

No infor­ma­ti­on is curr­ent­ly available regar­ding the con­di­ti­on of the 8 per­sons on board. The­re is a bree­ze (7-8 m/s) and the visi­bi­li­ty is affec­ted by snow­fall.

Accor­ding to Nor­we­gi­an law, the Rus­si­an heli­c­op­ters in Spits­ber­gen are only allo­wed to fly for com­pa­ny pur­po­ses. Char­ter flights, for exam­p­le for film teams or sci­en­tists, are not per­mit­ted. This makes it likely that the 8 peo­p­le on board were employees of the owner of the heli­c­op­ter, Trust Ark­ti­ku­gol.

Update: next to the pilot (Bara­nov Evge­ny), co-pilot (Fro­lov Vla­di­mir), flight engi­neer (Alex­ei Pou­ly­aus­kas), a tech­ni­ci­an (Mihtar Marat), and an engi­neer (Koro­lev Alek­sey), the­re were 3 sci­en­tists of the Insti­tu­te for Arc­tic and Ant­ar­c­tic Rese­arch in St. Peters­burg on board: Golo­va­nov Oleg, Fade­ev Nicho­las, Kau­lio Mak­sim. The names were released in the Rus­si­an press.

Update: Dmit­rij Zjel­jaz­kov, direc­tor of Kon­vers Avia, the com­pa­ny that owns and ope­ra­tes the heli­c­op­ter, has told the Rus­si­an news agen­cy Tass that the 3 pas­sen­gers were miners of the Trust Ark­ti­ku­gol.

Source: NRK