Russia mourns plane crash victims

By Vladimir Radyuhin

MOSCOW, JULY 4. Russia will observe a day of mourning on Thursday for the 145 people killed in a plane crash in southern Siberia on Tuesday night.

The three-engine jet, TU-154, was on a flight from Yekaterenburg in the Ural Mountains to Vladivostok in the Far East when it crashed while coming down for a scheduled stopover landing in Irkutsk. All 136 passengers and nine crew, including 12 Chinese nationals and six children, were killed.

The President, Mr. Vladimir Putin, who ordered the mourning, said in a message of condolences that the Government would thoroughly investigate the disaster to determine its cause.

Engine failure is seen as the mostly likely cause of the crash, the first in Russian civil aviation for several years. The TU-154 fell from an altitude of 800 metres while performing the third of the required four circles before landing. The possibility of explosion on board has been ruled out as the wreckage was compact enough to suggest the plane broke apart only on hitting the ground. Both of the plane's ``black box'' flight data recorders have been recovered and sent for analysis.

The Tupolev 154 is the main medium-range workhorse of Russia's civil jet fleet, with over 1,000 aircraft built in the former Soviet Union. Although the plane has been involved in four other major crashes since 1994, killing more than 350 people, its safety record is comparable to other types of civil aircraft.

The plane was operated by VladivostokAvia, one of hundreds of domestic carriers which emerged in Russia after the break-up of the Soviet Union. The airline had bought the 15-year- old jet last year from China and had it overhauled.

AFP reports:

The Emergencies Minister, Mr. Sergei Shoigu, who rushed to the scene of the crash said, ``As you can see, the plane is resting perpendicular to the direction in which it was actually headed. Most likely, it just fell flat down.''

In his first comments upon arrival in Irkutsk, Mr. Shoigu said the airliner's sudden fall from a height of 850 metres had probably been caused by a failure of all three engines.

He said minutes before the tragedy - as the plane was making its third approach to Irkutsk airport - the crew had informed air traffic controllers that everything was normal. But Mr. Shoigu later backtracked and conceded that the accident appeared beyond explanation. He did not rule out a defect in the plane's altimeter, a faulty manoeuvre by a crewmember or even a terrorist action.

The head of the Vladivostokavia airline that was operating the plane, Mr. Vladimir Razbezhkin, told reporters at the Vladivostok airport that the disaster could have resulted from an explosion caused by a leak in the fuel supply.

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Section  : International
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