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| This photo provided by the Russian Emergency Situations Ministry shows debris at the crash site of the Russian passenger airliner, Boeing 737, near Kazan, the capital of the Tatarstan republic, about 720 kilometers (450 miles) east of Moscow, Sunday, Nov. 17, 2013. A Russian passenger airliner crashed Sunday night while trying to land at the airport in the city of Kazan, killing everyone aboard, officials said. The Boeing 737 belonging to Tatarstan Airlines crashed an hour after taking off from Moscow. There were no immediate indications of the cause. |
MOSCOW (AP)
-- A Boeing 737 jetliner crashed and burst into flames Sunday night
while trying to land at the airport in the Russian city of Kazan,
killing all 50 people aboard in the latest in a string of deadly crashes
across the country.
The Tatarstan Airlines
plane was trying to make a second landing attempt when it touched the
surface of the runway near the control tower, and was "destroyed and
caught fire," said Sergei Izvolky, the spokesman for the Russian
aviation agency.
The Emergencies Ministry said
there were 44 passengers and six crew members aboard the evening flight
from Moscow and all had been killed. Kazan, a city of about 1.1 million
and the capital of the Tatarstan republic, is about 720 kilometers (450
miles) east of the capital.
The ministry
released a list of the dead, which included Irek Minnikhanov, the son of
Tatarstan's governor, and Alexander Antonov, who headed the Tatarstan
branch of the Federal Security Service, the main successor agency to the
Soviet-era KGB.
Some Russian air crashes have
been blamed on the use of aging aircraft, but industry experts point to
a number of other problems, including poor crew training, crumbling
airports, lax government controls and widespread neglect of safety in
the pursuit of profits.
The Emergencies
Ministry released photographs from the nighttime scene showing parts of
the aircraft and debris scattered across the ground. Ambulances lined up
in front of the airport building.
It was not
clear why the plane's first landing attempt was unsuccessful. Boeing
said it would provide assistance to the investigation into the cause.
"Boeing's thoughts are with those affected by the crash," the company said in a statement on its website.
A
journalist who said she had flown on the same aircraft from Kazan to
Moscow's Domodedovo airport earlier in the day told Channel One state
television that the landing in Moscow had been frightening because of a
strong vibration during the final minutes of the flight.
"When
we were landing it was not clear whether there was a strong wind,
although in Moscow the weather was fine, or some kind of technical
trouble or problem with the flight," said Lenara Kashafutdinova. "We
were blown in different directions, the plane was tossed around. The man
sitting next to me was white as a sheet."
Tatarstan
is one of the wealthier regions of Russia because of its large deposits
of oil. It is also is a major manufacturing center, producing trucks,
helicopters and planes. About half of the people who live in the
republic are ethnic Tatars, most of whom are Muslims.
Russia's
last fatal airliner crash was in December, when a Russian-made Tupolev
belonging to Red Wings airline careered off the runway at Moscow's
Vnukovo airport, rolled across a snowy field and slammed into the slope
of a nearby highway, breaking into pieces and catching fire.
Investigators say equipment failure caused the crash, which killed five
people.
A 2011 crash in Yaroslavl that killed
44 people including a professional hockey team was blamed on pilot
error. And Russian investigators found that the pilots in two crashes
that killed 10 and 47 people in recent years were intoxicated.
