Russian President Vladimir Putin and Kocharian declared tomorrow a day of mourning in both countries, the Kremlin said.

An file photo shows an Armavia Airbus A320 passenger airliner on the tarmac at Yerevan airport. An Armenian airliner crashed into the Black Sea off the Russian coast in heavy rain on May 3, and all 113 passengers and crew on board were killed. [Reuters]

Wreckage from the plane was found not far from the shoreline, Beltsov said, and Sergei Kudinov, the head of the emergency ministry's southern office, said the fuselage was found at a depth of 400 metres.

Search and rescue teams had pulled 46 bodies from the water by mid-afternoon, emergency officials said; none was wearing a life jacket, indicating they did not have time to prepare for an emergency landing.

Twenty-five boats, many carrying divers, were involved in the search, and a deep-sea robot was to be used to try to recover the plane's recorders, the emergency ministry said. But Rudolf Teymurazov of Russia's Intergovernmental Aviation Committee, expressed doubt the recorders could be found because water at the crash site is as deep as 2 kilometres.