YEREVAN — An Armenian military training plane crashed on Friday, killing its two pilots on board.
The Soviet-designed Yak-52 plane crashed into wasteland near Yeghvard, a small town 20 kilometers north of Yerevan. Armenia’s Defense Ministry said that it went down while carrying out a training flight in the morning.
The ministry identified the two victims as Senior Lieutenant Armen Isakhanyan and Aviation Cadet Armen Khachatryan. Their bodies were quickly found and retrieved from the plane’s wreckage.
The crash site remained cordoned off by police and other law-enforcement bodies in the afternoon. Investigators at the scene refused to talk to reporters.
The cause of the accident was thus not clear. Armenia’s Investigative Committee said only that it has launched an inquiry into a serious violation of flight safety rules.
The Yakovlev Yak-52 is a Soviet-designed single-engine two-seat primary trainer aircraft that was designed in the 1970s. It has remained in service in several countries around the world.
