Monday 6 May 2019

RUSSIA:41 Killed After Aeroflot Aircraft Made A Crash Landing And Caught Fire At Sheremetyevo Airport In Moscow

A Russian-made jet was forced to make an emergency landing at Moscow's Sheremetyevo Airport, with images from the scene showing flames and smoke at the end of the aircraft. Dozens of people have died.

Up to 41 people were killed when a passenger airliner made a crash landing and caught fire in Moscow on Sunday.

Russia's Investigative Committee said at least two children were among those who died. The Emergencies Ministry stated that six people had been hospitalized.

The Investigative Committee later said 37 have survived out of the 78 on board.

The Russian-made Sukhoi Superjet belonged to national carrier Aeroflot and was carrying 73 passengers and five crew members.

The passengers were forced to evacuate using emergency slides, with videos showing people staggering away from the burning plane.

The aircraft was set to leave Sheremetyevo for the northern city of Murmansk, which is located inside the Artic Circle and near the border with Finland.

However, an onboard emergency forced the pilots to turn the plane around shortly after taking off.

Shortly after the incident, Aeroflot released a statement saying that the jet was forced to turn back due to technical problems. The airline did not specify exactly what problems the plane was experiencing.

It's not yet clear when the fire broke out on the Aeroflot jet.

The plane reportedly made several attempts to land, with airport officials saying that the plane caught fire when it made a hard emergency landing.

The plane sent out a distress signal after taking off, started emergency landing procedures, failed to land in the first attempt, and in the second it hit landing gear and its nose on the runway and started burning, an unnamed source told Interfax.

Russian media, however, reported that the fire broke out on the plane before it landed. Russian authorities and the airline have yet to comment on the exact reason the jet turned around.

Investigators were at the scene in Sheremetyevo, Russian officials said.

The Sukhoi Superjet 100 made its first commercial flight in 2011. In May 2012, a plane of this type crashed while on a promotional flight in Indonesia with 50 people on board.

The flight recorders from a plane that caught fire during an emergency landing at a Moscow airport have been retrieved. At least 41 people died as a result and it is uncertain if the fire started before or after landing.

Passengers who managed to escape the fireball crash of a Russian Aeroflot passenger plane in which 41 people died have blamed a lightning strike on causing the tragedy.

Survivor Pyotr Egorov said: We took off and then lightning struck the plane.

The plane turned back and there was a hard landing. We were so scared, we almost lost consciousness.

The plane jumped down the landing strip like a grasshopper and then caught fire on the ground.

Passengers were also accused of delaying the evacuation of the burning plane by reaching into the overhead compartments to retrieve their belongings.

The evacuation of the plane had been delayed by some passengers insisting on collecting their hand luggage first.

The plane had only succeeded making an emergency landing on the second attempt and that some of the aircraft's systems had then failed.

Russian officials said today that both flight recorders were recovered from the plane.

Russian Investigative Committee spokeswoman Svetlana Petrenko said investigators are looking into three main possibilities behind the cause of the disaster, insufficient pilot qualifications, equipment failure, and weather.

Video on Russian TV showed the Aeroflot plane's underside bursting into flames and spewing black smoke after making a hard landing at Sheremetyevo Airport on Sunday night.

Those who escaped leapt out of the Sukhoi SSJ100 airliner down inflatable emergency slides and ran across the tarmac.

Storms were passing through the Moscow area when the jet caught fire during the emergency landing, after it turned back for unspecified reasons during an internal flight to Murmansk.

Meanwhile, Russian transport minister Yevgeny Dietrich said 41 bodies have been recovered from the burned wreckage.

He also told reporters in a briefing on Monday that six people who survived the disaster on Sunday night are being treated in hospital.

Shocking footage showed the Sukhoi Superjet 100 crash bouncing along the tarmac at Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport before the rear part of the plane suddenly burst into flames.

Russian state TV broadcast mobile phone footage shot by another passenger in which people could be heard screaming.

Passengers on board SU 1492 then escaped via the plane's emergency slides that inflated after the hard landing.

The plane, which had been flying from Moscow to the northern Russian city of Murmansk, had been carrying 73 passengers and five crew members, Russia's aviation watchdog said.

Svetlana Petrenko, a spokeswoman for Russia's Investigative Committee, said in a statement that only 37 out of 78 people on board had survived, meaning 41 people had lost their lives.

No official cause has been given for the disaster.

An investigation has been opened and is looking into whether the pilots had breached air safety rules.

President Vladimir Putin and Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev expressed their condolences and ordered investigators to establish what had happened.

Russian news agencies reported that injured passengers were being treated in hospitals.

The plane had circled twice over Moscow before making an emergency landing after just under 30 minutes in the air.

The plane's under carriage gave way on impact and its engines caught fire.

The plane had only succeeded making an emergency landing on the second attempt and that some of the aircraft's systems had then failed.

The emergency landing was so hard that debris had found its way into the engines, sparking a fire that swiftly engulfed the rear of the fuselage, the same source said.

Russian investigators said they were looking into various versions.

The plane had been produced in 2017 and had been serviced as recently as April this year.

Aeroflot has long shaken off its troubled post Soviet safety record and now has one of the world's most modern fleets on international routes where it relies on Boeing and Airbus aircraft.

Russian officials are keen for Aeroflot to buy more Sukhoi Superjets, a regional airliner, for domestic flights to support the country's fledgling civil aircraft industry. The plane is built in Russia's Far East.

A Sukhoi Superjet crashed in Indonesia in 2012, killing all 45 people on board in an accident blamed on human error.

The Superjet entered service in 2011 and was the first new passenger jet developed in Russia since the fall of the Soviet Union.

It has been hit, however, by sporadic concerns over safety and reliability, including a December 2016 grounding after a defect was discovered in an aircraft's tail section.

Russian officials said on Sunday it was premature to talk of grounding the Sukhoi Superjet for now. The plane is predominantly used by Russian airlines like Aeroflot, but is also used by a few other foreign operators, including a low-cost Mexican airline.

Terrifying new footage has revealed how a stricken Russian plane bounced down the runway at a Moscow airport before catching fire in an air disaster which killed 41 people.

The struggling Superjet plane came in to land at Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport yesterday but flicked off the tarmac and remained airborne before collapsing to the ground seconds later.

The new security footage shows a fireball erupting from the fuselage as the damaged plane careers along the runway with a huge cloud of smoke trailing behind it.

It also emerged today that a hero stewardess kicked open an exit door to help passengers escape the inferno on board the plane, which was returning to Moscow to make an emergency landing.

Tatyana Kasatkina, 34, grabbed passengers by their collars and pushed them to safety - as others said they were slowed down by customers trying to retrieve their luggage.

However another flight attendant, Maxim Moissev, died in the flames as he tried desperately to open a door at the rear of the plane.

Russian officials are still probing the cause of the crash, suggesting three theories: insufficient pilot qualifications, equipment failure, and weather. They do not intend to ground the type of aircraft.

Both flight recorders have today been recovered, which will allow investigators to examine what went wrong aboard a plane which pilot Denis Evdokimov said had been hit by lightning.

Dozens of flights at Sheremetyevo were delayed because of the disaster.


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