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>> 17 were children. that's the understanding we have at the moment. seven of the people on board were airline crew. what russian media is reporting here again is that the pilot, the captain, made a call. the plane disappeared from the radar 23 minutes after it took off early this morning. and sometime in that time period the pilot made a call requesting an emergency landing at a nearby air field. it crashed in the northern sinai. this route between st. petersburg, the plane was en route from sharm el-sheikh, a holiday destination by the seaside, still warm weather, blue skies, on its way back...

Might rule out another rumor going around that it's another missile incident. so if it has gone technical and the pilot has did requested an emergency landing then he would have actually prepared the aircraft for an emergency landing. so that hasn't happened. and i understand that they're saying now that the debris field is quite wide and it is totally destroyed. 224 people on board, i'm hearing and that the egyptians say it is actually in a war zone. so there are some problems there. there's some terrorist activity going on. but they seem to be on top of it, they seem to have actually got som...

For the russians, especially this time of year when it gets cold. and it was due back into st. petersburg in london time about 3:51. and it took off and it was due at st. petersburg about 12:10. there's more information coming in now. there's also -- we're getting flight tracking radar screens up which actually shows that the plane disappeared at one point, which means that of course all the systems have shut down or it's crashed. >> julian, for viewers watching here in the united states and around the world, i want to be very precise about the information that we're passing along. again, what...

>> reporter: i can tell you what the family members here in russia will be hearing. they will be hearing what state media is reporting. across the whole spectrum of media here, state media and others, they are at the moment reporting that that plane went off the radar after 23 minutes after taking off from sharm el-sheikh. but they're also reporting at this time, and i have to emphasize this is early stages, but we're talking about what the families are learning here. they'll be learning things from watching russian media. what they're learning is that the pilot made a call back to the ground ...

Tat plane, apparently was carrying some 217 passengers, it was carrying 7 crew members, according to our own nic robertson, 17 people on the plane were children. it apparently vanished from radar 23 minutes after it took off from sharm el-sheikh. egypt says dozens of ambulances are on their way to the crash site and we're expecting more information this hour and we'll bring you that information as we get it. first let's bring in aviation expert julian bray joining us via skype from cambridge, england. still very early in this investigation for sure but we heard from our own nic robertson in mo...