Three dead in small plane crash: German police

BERLIN: A small plane crashed in western Germany Sunday killing the pilot and two passengers believed to be Russian, police said, as a Russian airline identified one of the victims as its co-owner.

A police statement said the six-seater aircraft travelling from France to the town of Egelsbach south of Frankfurt went down in a field at around 1330 GMT.

The cause of the accident was still unclear.

"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.

However Russian airline S7 said a co-owner of the company, Natalia Fileva, was among the dead.

Fileva, whose husband is S7 CEO Vladislav Filev, was listed in 2018 by Forbes magazine as the fourth richest woman in Russia with an estimated fortune of $600 million.

"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 (a) Frankfurt airport. The cause of the tragedy is not yet known," the company said in a statement.