‘Last photo on this plane’ Tragic makeup artist’s eerie final selfie before FlyDubai crash

THIS is the tragic selfie a young makeup artist posted on social media moments before the doomed FlyDubai flight crashed killing everybody on board.

Anna Sergeeva smiled sweetly into her smartphone camera while sitting in her seat on flight FZ981 on Friday evening, unaware it would be her last ever selfie.

Painfully prohetic words written in Russian on the photo by the young woman read: "Last photo on this plane. :)"

The 25-year-old tragically died just a couple of hours later along with 54 other passengers and seven crew members after the plane from Dubai crashed just before the runway of its destination airport in Rostov-on-Don, southern Russia.

The heartbreaking photo of the pretty brunette has been shared widely on social media after followers realised it was the last photo taken by a passenger on the ill-fated flight.

Ms Sergeeva had been living in Dubai for the past six-months working as a beautician to send money back to her mother and younger brother.

Karina, a close friend, said: "Anna lived in Dubai for the last six months working to support her mother and 11-year-old brother, who live in Kharkiv."

Four-and-a-half months ago, the beautician posted a photo on social media of her flight ticket, saying "I am going home for one week".

Her last selfie has received numerous messages of condolences.

One user said: "Rest in peace. I'm so sad tonight. Cz i will miss you so much."

A total of 44 passengers out of the 55 on board the budget airline's aircraft were Russian citizens, including four children.

Russian officials said the plane's pilots had attempted to land once but aborted due to bad weather and ended up crashing just short of the runway during a second attempt.

The Boeing 737-800 disintegrated into pieces after exploding into a fireball.

It was also revealed over the weekend pilot Aristos Sokratous, 37, had 5,900 hours flying experience and was at the controls of the aircraft when he aborted the first landing after being warned about severe turbulence and ferocious winds.

The Cypriot then made another attempt to land after two extra hours in the air but the plane crashed 250 metres short of the runway after coming through rain, "hurricane-force winds" and cumulonimbus clouds which are warned as being "highly dangerous" for flying in.

Mr Sokratous was on his final flight with the airline and was due to move to Ireland with his pregnant wife, who he married seven months ago, to work for Ryanair.

Emergencies Ministry members search the wreckage at the crash site of Flight number FZ981, a Boeing 737-800 operated by Dubai-based budget carrier Flydubai, at the airport of Rostov-On-Don, Russia, March 19, 2016. REUTERS/Stringer EDITORIAL USE ONLY. NO RESALES. NO ARCHIVE

FlyDubai's CEO Ghaith al-Ghaith said on Saturday it was too early to determine why the plane, which was just over five years old, crashed and it is investigating to try to "establish the facts".

Russian investigators said on Monday they had been able to retrieve data from a damaged cockpit voice recorder recovered from the scene of the crash.

The country's Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev ordered officials to examine whether Russia's flight safety rules needed to be tightened up in light of the tragedy.

Questions have been raised about why the aircraft went ahead with its attempts to land when another jet heading for the same airport a short while earlier had diverted elsewhere because of the bad weather.

The Dubai government said on Twitter FlyDubai would resume flights from Rostov-on-Don on Tuesday.

Russian Transport Minister Maxim Sokolov said other flights to and from the city had resumed after the airport was closed for a time following the crash.

The plane's flight data recorder survived largely intact, but the cockpit voice recorder — which should shed light on the pilots' final conversations — was badly damaged, leading officials to say initially it could take weeks to restore it.

A spokesman of the Interstate Aviation Committee (IAC), which is investigating the crash, said: "Memory has already been retrieved from the black boxes, it's being worked on.

"The decoding of the two black boxes may take between several weeks and several months."