ROSTOV-ON-DON, RUSSIA — High winds and impaired visibility may have caused a passenger jet from the United Arab Emirates to take a nosedive on Saturday, killing all 62 people on board. <br /> <br />FlyDubai flight FZ981 had 55 passengers and seven crew members on board when it crashed in Russia Saturday at 3:50 a.m. local time. The Boeing 737, carrying mostly Russians, was flying from Dubai to Rostov-on-Don, a city near the Ukrainian-Russian border. <br /> <br />Inclement weather prevented a timely descent and the aircraft circled the airport for more than two hours. A Russian Aeroflot plane scheduled to land at around the same time also circled around and tried to land three times before it then diverted to another airport, reported the National. <br /> <br />As flight FZ981 circled the airport, the plane ascended to 4,572 metres but suddenly started to fall at a vertical speed of up to 6,400 metres per minute. A distress call was never made, but as the aircraft approached the airport, the pilots called air traffic control and asked about the weather conditions. <br /> <br />Just 240 metres from the runway in Rostov-on-Don, the plane reportedly clipped a wing and the aircraft burst into flames. According to Reuters, both of the black boxes have been retrieved undamaged. <br /> <br />Authorities do not believe terrorism caused the crash. Instead, they’re focusing on several possibilities: technical issues, severe weather and human error.
