At least four killed when plane crashes during landing in Russia
Ivan Sekretarev/The Associated Press
Rescuers work at the site where a
plane careered off the runway at Vnukovo Airport in Moscow on Dec. 29,
2012. A Tu-204 aircraft belonging to Russian airline Red Wings careered
off the runway at Russia's third-busiest airport, broke into pieces and
caught fire, killing several people.
MOSCOW — A passenger airliner careered off the runway at Russia’s
third-busiest airport and partly onto a highway while landing on
Saturday, broke into pieces and caught fire, killing at least four
people.
Officials said there were eight people aboard the Tu-204 belonging to Russian airline Red Wings that was flying back from the Czech Republic without passengers to its home at Vnukovo Airport.
Emergency officials said in a televised news conference that four
people were killed and another four severely injured when the plane
rolled off the runway into a snowy field and partly onto an adjacent
highway, then disintegrated. No collisions with vehicles on the major,
multilane highway were reported.
The plane’s cockpit area was sheared off from the fuselage and a large chunk gashed out near the tail.
The crash occurred amid light snow and winds gusting up to 15 metres a second (30 mph), but other details were not immediately known. A spokesman for Russia’s top investigative agency, Vladimir Markin, said initial indications were that pilot error was the cause.
The state news agency RIA Novosti cited an unidentified official at
the Russian Aviation Agency as saying another Red Wings Tu-204 had gone
off the runway at the international airport in Novosibirsk in Siberia on
Dec. 20.
The agency said that incident, in which no one was injured, was due to the failure of the plane’s engines to go into reverse upon landing and that its brake system malfunctioned.
On Friday, the Aviation Agency sent a directive to the Tupolev
company’s president calling for it to take urgent preventive measures.
Vnukovo airport spokeswoman Yelena Krylova said it had enough personnel and equipment to keep the runway fully functional Saturday. The airport resumed receiving planes after a break of several hours.
Prior to Saturday’s crash, there had been no fatal accidents reported for Tu-204s, which entered commercial service in 1995. The plane is a twin-engine midrange jet with a capacity of about 210 passengers.
Vnukovo, on the southern outskirts of Moscow, is one of the Russian capital’s three international airports.
Officials said there were eight people aboard the Tu-204 belonging to Russian airline Red Wings that was flying back from the Czech Republic without passengers to its home at Vnukovo Airport.
Kirill Kudryavtsev/AFP/Getty Images Russian
police investigators and emergency services teams
work at the Tu-204
jet crash site near the Vnukovo airport outside Moscow on Dec. 29, 2012.
The plane’s cockpit area was sheared off from the fuselage and a large chunk gashed out near the tail.
The crash occurred amid light snow and winds gusting up to 15 metres a second (30 mph), but other details were not immediately known. A spokesman for Russia’s top investigative agency, Vladimir Markin, said initial indications were that pilot error was the cause.
Kirill Kudryavtsev/AFP/Getty Images Russian
police investigators and emergency services teams
work at the Tu-204
jet crash site near the Vnukovo airport outside Moscow on Dec. 29, 2012.
The agency said that incident, in which no one was injured, was due to the failure of the plane’s engines to go into reverse upon landing and that its brake system malfunctioned.
Ivan Sekretarev/The Associated PressRussian
police investigators and emergency services teams
work at the Tu-204
jet crash site near the Vnukovo airport outside Moscow on Dec. 29, 2012.
Vnukovo airport spokeswoman Yelena Krylova said it had enough personnel and equipment to keep the runway fully functional Saturday. The airport resumed receiving planes after a break of several hours.
Prior to Saturday’s crash, there had been no fatal accidents reported for Tu-204s, which entered commercial service in 1995. The plane is a twin-engine midrange jet with a capacity of about 210 passengers.
Vnukovo, on the southern outskirts of Moscow, is one of the Russian capital’s three international airports.
Alexander Usoltsev/The Associated Press Russian
police investigators and emergency services teams work at the
Tu-204
jet crash site near the Vnukovo airport outside Moscow on Dec. 29, 2012.
Labels: Catastrophe, Russia
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