One of Russia’s richest women has died in a plane crash in south-western Germany along with two other people.
Natalia Fileva, a co-owner of the private Russian airline S7, also known as Siberia Airlines, was confirmed as one of the victims of Sunday’s crash in statement issued by her company.
A police car racing to the scene of the crash collided with an other vehicle, killing the two people inside and seriously injuring three police officers, the DPA news agency reported.
The air crash involved a six-seater aircraft travelling from France to the town of Egelsbach south of Frankfurt. The plane went down in a field at around 1330 GMT, police said. The Epic-Lt, a single-engined aircraft designed for private flights, disappeared from radars at 1322 GMT, according to data from the flight tracker Flightradar24.
A second passenger, also believed to be Russian, and the pilot were also killed.
Fileva, whose husband is the S7 chief executive Vladislav Filev, was listed in 2018 by Forbes magazine as the fourth-richest woman in Russia with an estimated fortune of $600m.
“On March 31, 2019, S7 Airlines shareholder Natalia Fileva was killed at the age of 55 during the descent in a private Epic-LT plane to Frankfurt airport. The cause of the tragedy is not yet known,” the company said in a statement.
“After impact, the aircraft was completely burnt out,” police said.
The police statement said the passengers would probably only be positively identified in the coming week.
With Agence France-Presse and Reuters
