Investigators probe Russian plane disaster as relatives desperately seek news
By MIKE ECKEL
AP Worldstream;
Jul 11, 2006
Relatives and friends of passengers aboard an Airbus A310 that crashed
at a Siberian airport went from one hospital to another Tuesday in
hopes of finding survivors, while aviation officials struggled to
explain Russia’s second deadly passenger jet disaster in nearly as
many months.
Three other incidents involving Russian-operated planes occurred
on Monday, including the crash-landing in Ukraine of a jet carrying
Russia’s navy chief.
Several officers on board suffered burns. The two other incidents
involved successful emergency landings after technical failures _
adding more questions about the safety record of the nation’s civil
aviation industry.
In Irkutsk, 4,200 kilometers (2,600 miles) east of Moscow, the Airbus
airliner, operated by the company S7, careened off a wet runway and
slammed into adjacent garages Sunday morning, bursting into flames.
As of Tuesday, 125 of the 203 people aboard were confirmed dead,
after one died in a hospital, the Emergency Situations Ministry
said. Fifty-two remained hospitalized.
The Russian prosecutors’ office said 128 had died, including the
hospital patient. Neither office could explain the discrepancy.
Twelve of the most critically injured were transported to Moscow on
Tuesday for medical treatment, and more were expected to be sent in
coming days, regional government officials said.
The preliminary investigation showed that the plane’s braking
system failed, Russian news agencies reported, citing unnamed
sources. Transport Minister Igor Levitin said the two flight recorders
were being analyzed.
There were 193 passengers on the Moscow-Irkutsk flight Sunday _
including 14 children _ and a crew of 10, the S7 press office said. At
least 12 were foreigners, from Belarus, Poland, China, Germany and
Azerbaijan, according to the flight manifest.
At one Irkutsk morgue, dozens of people struggled to identify their
loved ones, clustering around printed lists of the victims, which
bore graphic, clinical details of the victims. One woman shouted in
frustration at the line of police controlling the entrance to the
morgue: "Can we just go and see the children? Can’t we just identify
the children?"
Ivan Zotov said he lost his 32-year-old brother, who was returning
from a vacation at the Black Sea resort of Sochi. His brother’s wife
and daughter had not learned of the death yet, since they were on a
train home to Irkutsk.
"It’s ridiculous. It’s like they’re just a sack of potatoes. How can
we figure anything out from these lists?" Zotov said, shaking his
head in frustration.
Levitin told reporters that 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.
The plane, built in 1987, had been regularly maintained and met all
certifications, airline spokesman Konstantin Koshman said.
The catastrophe was the second major commercial airline crash in two
months in Russia. It was the fourth air crash in Irkutsk in the past
12 years.
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.
Airline experts said though Russia’s safety record is not yet up to
Western standards, it is far better than during the chaotic post-Soviet
period, when the state carrier Aeroflot split into hundreds of private
carriers, many of which lacked funds to properly maintain and service
their planes.
"The safety record has improved a lot in recent years. In not all
that long from now, it may be comparable with the West," said David
Learmount, an aviation safety expert from the British weekly Flight
International.