CALCUTTA, India -- An Indian Airlines Boeing 737 carrying 69 passengers and crew crashed shortly before it was to land in far northeastern Manipur state Friday, killing all aboard, the state's chief executive said.
Indian Airlines Flight 257 crashed near a lake in hilly terrain outside the city of Imphal, the capital of Manipur state, which borders Burma and Bangladesh. The plane was traveling from Calcutta to Imphal, 405 miles to the northeast, when it went down.
The plane, piloted by Capt. Sekhar Haldar, lost contact with the Imphal control tower five minutes before it was scheduled to land at 12:55 p.m., airline sources said. The aircraft took off from Calcutta at 11:45 a.m., they said.
The plane was carrying six crew members and 63 passengers, including two children, an Indian Airlines spokesman said. Manipur state Chief Minister R.K. Ranbir Singh told the Press Trust of India news agency all 69 people aboard the plane were killed.
The Press Trust said the dead included Tompok Singh, a former deputy chief minister of the state, and Bira Singh, a former state minister of education.
A soldier discovered the wreckage of the airplane about 90 minutes after it crashed about 5 miles from Imphal, airline sources said. The plane crashed on top of a small hill and one wing was broken, the Press Trust reported.
The cause of the crash was not immediately known and airline and aviation officials flew to the scene to investigate. Indian Airlines operates 27 Boeing 737s and three of the them have been involved in fatal crashes since 1973.
The crash of Flight 257 was the third deadly accident involving an Indian Airlines plane in three years. A Boeing 737 crash Oct. 19, 1988, near the western city of Ahmedabad, killed 133 people, and an Airbus 320 crash at Bangalore Feb. 14, 1990, killed 86.
