Russia marks day of mourning as relatives arrive to identify bodies of plane crash victims
By MIKE ECKEL

AP Worldstream;
Jul 10, 2006

Flags flew at half-staff, churches held special prayers and
entertainment programs were canceled across Russia on Monday to mark
a day of mourning for the victims of a weekend plane crash in the
Siberian city of Irkutsk that killed at least 124 people and left
four others missing.

Fifty-two people remained in hospitals Monday after the airliner
careened off a rain-slicked runway into adjacent garages on Sunday
and burst into flame, said Viktor Beltsov, spokesman for the Emergency
Situations Ministry.

Seventy-five of the 203 people aboard the plane survived, he said.

It was the second major commercial airline crash in two months
in Russia.

Preliminary data gathered by the commission investigating the crash
indicated that the braking system on the Airbus A310 operated by
Russian airline S7 had failed, Russian news agencies reported, citing
unnamed sources.

Transport Minister Igor Levitin said the aircraft’s two recorders
had been recovered and were being analyzed.

The S7 press office said there were 193 passengers on the
Moscow-Irkutsk flight Sunday _ including 14 children _ and a crew
of 10 aboard. Emergency Ministry spokeswoman Natalia Lukash said
three people whose names were not on the passenger list were pulled
unconscious from the wreckage; it was not clear if they had been on
the ground or were flying as unregistered passengers.

Irkutsk is 4,200 kilometers (2,600 miles) east of Moscow.

At least 12 of the passengers were foreigners, from Belarus, Poland,
China, Germany, Azerbaijan, according to the flight manifest.

The plane veered off the runway on landing and tore through a
2-meter-high (6-foot-high) concrete barrier. It then crashed into a
compound of one-story garages, stopping a short distance from some
small houses, about 7:50 a.m.

Sunday (2250GMT Saturday).

Cranes could be seen hanging over the wreckage on Monday, as several
dozen investigators stood on top of what remained of the fuselage in
a light rain.

Charred and water-logged wreckage stood two stories high. A penetrating
smell of burning hung over the scene.

Relatives were arriving at Irkutsk morgues to try to identify the dead.

A witness said he heard a concussion and the ground trembled.

"I saw smoke coming from the aircraft. People were already walking
out who were charred, injured, burnt," Mikhail Yegeryov told NTV
television.

Pilots regard the Irkutsk airport as difficult because its runway
slopes and because its concrete is especially slippery when wet,
Vladimir Biryukov, an expert at the Gromov Aviation Institute, said
on NTV.

The transport minister, speaking to reporters in Irkutsk, said
authorities were looking into a proposal to lengthen the runway at the
airport by 400 meters (a quarter-mile) and he announced financing for
resurfacing the runway. He also said that city authorities had been
asked to determine whether the buildings the plane collided into had
been constructed legally.

Airline spokesman Konstantin Koshman said the plane, which was
constructed in 1987, had been regularly maintained and met all
certifications.

In May, another Airbus crashed in stormy weather off Russia’s Black Sea
coast as it prepared to land, killing all 113 people on board. Airline
officials blamed the crash of the Armenian passenger plane on driving
rain and low visibility.

Sunday’s disaster was the fourth air crash in Irkutsk in the past
12 years.

Another Russian airliner, a Tu-154 operated by Urals Airlines, made
a successful emergency landing in Irkutsk on Monday after one of its
engines failed, Beltsov said.

An S7 Airbus A310 made an emergency landing early Monday in the Crimean
port of Simferopol after pilots noticed a drop in fuel level in one
of the engines, the RIA-Novosti news agency reported.

Russian air safety standards plummeted in the years following the
1991 Soviet collapse as the state carrier Aeroflot split into hundreds
of private carriers, many of which lacked funds to properly maintain
and service their planes.

Economic stabilization and strengthening of official controls helped
improve air safety in the 1990s and the nation’s aviation safety
record gradually returned to normal. Russia’s oil-driven boom of recent
years has bolstered the carriers’ earnings and allowed many airlines
to replace their aging Soviet-era jets with Boeings and Airbuses.

Authorities have said, however, that some airlines weren’t diligent
enough about safety and called for stronger enforcement of official
standards throughout the industry.