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 the tail section partly torn away.
The crash occurred amid snow and winds gusting up to 15 meters 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.
The plane that crashed Saturday took off from Pardubice airport in the Czech Republic. Jan Anderlik, the director of the company that operates the airport, told Czech public television that the plane underwent a regular technical check before takeoff and no problems were discovered.
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.
The Red Wings airline is one of the holdings of Russian billionaire Alexander Lebedev, who also owns the British newspapers The Independent and the Evening Standard.
Vnukovo, on the southern outskirts of Moscow, is one of the Russian Capital’s three International Airports.
| ||
Pilot uninjured as small plane crash-lands at McAllen airport Monitor A small plane sits along the end of the runway Monday, Dec. 31, 2012, at the McAllen-Miller International Airport. The pilot was not hurt in the incident that prompted airport officials to delay some flights as the small plane was moved off onto a ... See all stories on this topic » | ||
Pilot killed in 'light' plane crash near Palmetto WTSP 10 News Palmetto, Florida -- Manatee County Sheriff's deputies, along with Fire Rescue, are currently on scene at a fatal light plane crash. Authorities say the plane went down in the heavily wooded area in the northern part of the county off Buckeye and Grass ... See all stories on this topic » | ||
| ||
| ||
Moscow plane crash: 4 die TriValley Central Rescuers work at the site where a plane careered off the runway Saturday at Vnukovo Airport in Moscow. A Tu-204 aircraft belonging to Russian airline Red Wings careered off the runway at Russia's third-busiest airport on Saturday, broke into pieces and ... See all stories on this topic » | ||
| ||
MAK: Vnukovo Plane Crash Not Caused by Runway The Moscow Times The Interstate Aviation Committee announced Monday that the Red Wings plane crash that occurred on Saturday at Vnukovo Airport was not caused by the airport's runway. According to the committee, the runway was checked immediately after the crash, and ... See all stories on this topic » |
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: only a member of this blog may post a comment.