RUSSIAN PM SIGNS ORDER TO PAY $3,700 TO AIR CRASH FAMILIES-1

RIA Novosti, Russia
May 25 2006

(Recasts paragraphs 2, 3, adds details after paragraph 3)

MOSCOW, May 25 (RIA Novosti) – Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov
has signed an order to pay 100,000 rubles ($3,700) to the families
of 113 people killed in a Black Sea air crash May 3, the government
said Thursday.

An Airbus owned by Armenia’s Armavia airline crashed in stormy weather
near the Russian resort of Sochi while flying from the Armenian
capital, Yerevan, on May 3.

The compensation will be paid out for all of the victims of the
disaster. The Finance Ministry will allocate the resources from
a government reserve fund during 2006, and forward them to the
administration of Krasnoyarsk Territory, where the tragedy occurred.

The recovery operation at the scene of the tragedy was officially
declared over on Wednesday, but Tatiana Anodina, head of the Interstate
Aviation Committee, said experts may face problems deciphering flight
data from the plane wreck, as the magnetic tape from its cockpit
flight recorder was seriously damaged.

She said experts might have to decipher each fragment of the tape
separately, and that this may take them longer than the 15-day
timeframe announced earlier.