44 including 8 foreigners killed in Russian plane crash (Second Lead)
June 21st, 2011 - 8:27 pm ICT by IANSMoscow, June 21 (IANS/RIA Novosti) Forty-four people, including eight foreigners, were killed when a Tu-134 passenger aircraft crashed in Russia’s republic of Karelia, an Emergency Situations Ministry spokesman said Tuesday.
The RusAir jet, which took off from Moscow at 10.30 p.m. local time Monday was due to arrive in Petrozavodsk at 00:04 Tuesday but crash landed on a highway one kilometre from Petrozavodsk airport, which was shrouded in fog.
The aircraft broke up and burst into flames on impact.
Russia’s Emergencies Ministry said that among those killed in the crash were four foreigners - one Swedish and one Dutch citizen and two Ukrainians - and a family of four with dual Russian-US citizenship.
Russian Investigative Committee spokesman Vladimir Markin said various possible causes for the accident are being studied, including human error.
A criminal case into the crash has been launched, he added.
Investigators have found out that the plane began to descend earlier than planned for unknown reasons, deviated from the runway and hit trees, and then power lines, a spokesman for Russian air transport regulator Rosaviatsia said.
“The voice recordings of the air traffic control service at Petrozavodsk airport with the aircraft’s flight crew have been obtained, and information requested about weather conditions. Investigators have also taken documentation from Domodedovo airport [from where the aircraft took off] and fuel samples,” investigators said.
Eight of the 52 people on board survived and were taken to local hospitals.
A child had undergone vascular surgery at the children’s hospital of the Republic of Karelia, said Sergei Goncharov, the head of the health ministry’s National Centre for Disaster Medicine.
One crew member, female flight attendant Yulia Skvortsova, survived, a RusAir spokesperson said.
According to russianplanes.net, the RusAir Tu-134 entered service in 1980 and had 40,000 hours of flying time. It was mothballed in 2009 but was brought back into use by RusAir in March 2011.
The Tu-134 is generally regarded by pilots as a rugged, simple and dependable aircraft.
According to AirDisaster.com, most of the nine Tu-134s accidents since 1990 have been attributed to pilot error by flight crews in CIS nation-state airlines.
–IANS/RIA Novosti
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Tags: air traffic control, criminal case, disaster medicine, dutch citizen, flight crew, health ministry, investigative committee, karelia, markin, ministry spokesman, passenger aircraft, petrozavodsk, ria novosti, russian air, russian plane crash, s hospital, sergei goncharov, tu 134, voice recordings, weather conditions