Russian Plane Crashes in Samara; 7 Dead

Saturday March 17, 2007 11:31 AM

MOSCOW (AP) – A Russian airliner crash landed in the central Russian city of
Samara on Saturday, killing seven people and injuring 23, emergency
officials said.

It was unclear what caused the incident. Emergency Situations Ministry
spokesman Viktor Beltsov described the accident as a “hard landing.”

Another Ministry representative, Irina Andrianova, said the plane was
landing in heavy fog and grazed the runway with one of its wings. She said there
was no fire after the crash.

The Tu-134 plane, an ageing model, belonged to the Russian airline UTAir and
had 57 people on board, including seven crew members, the company said in a
statement. Two of the crew were among the injured, it said.

Andrianova said seven people were killed, 23 were hospitalized, six of them
in serious condition. Earlier, officials had said 51 people had been injured,
but they revised the figure to 23, explaining that the rest were being
treated for psychological shock.

Some Russian media, citing local emergency officials, reported that the
plane landed on its fuselage after the landing gear failed to come down.

The plane had flown to Samara, about 550 miles southeast of Moscow, from
Surgut, about 1,000 miles to the east.

Authorities were investigating the cause of the incident, transport
officials and prosecutors said.

Tu-134s are widely used in the former Soviet Union. The last major crash of
a Russian airliner was on Aug. 22, when a Tu-154 of Pulkovo Airlines crashed
in Ukraine, killing all 170 people aboard.

In July, an Airbus-310 of S7 airlines went off the runway after landing in
Irkutsk, smashed into adjacent buildings and caught fire, killing 123 of the
203 people aboard. In May, an Armenian Airbus-320 crashed into the Black Sea
while trying to land in the southern Russian city of Sochi, killing all 113
people aboard.