113 killed as plane plunges into Black Sea
An Armenian passenger jet crashed in bad weather off the Black Sea coast while trying to make an emergency landing in Russia, killing all 113 people aboard.
The Airbus A-320, which belonged to the Armenian airline Armavia, disappeared from radar screens late last night, about 3.7 miles from the shore, and crashed after making a turn and heading towards Adler airport, near the city of Sochi, Viktor Beltsov, a spokesman for Russia’s Emergency Situations Ministry, said.
The ministry’s southern regional branch said all 113 people aboard the plane, including six children, were killed.
Armenian airline officials said they believed the crash was due to the stormy weather, but Sergei Kubinov, the head of the southern district office of the Emergency Situations Ministry, said the age of the aircraft and technical factors could have been involved. Investigators have ruled out terrorism.
Wreckage from the plane was found not far from the shoreline, Search and rescue teams had pulled 18 bodies from the water, Kudinov said. None was wearing lifejackets, indicating they did not have sufficient warning to prepare for an emergency landing. Boats and divers were involved in the search, which was hampered by rough seas and driving rain.
The plane disappeared from radar screens at about 2.15am today, local time (11.15pm Irish time yesterday) during a flight from Yerevan to Sochi, a resort city on the Black Sea in southern Russia, Beltsov said.
He said the plane went down while trying to make a repeat attempt at an emergency landing.
Armavia deputy commercial deputy Andrei Agadzhanov said in the Armenian capital, Yerevan, that the crew had communicated with Sochi ground controllers while the plane was flying over the Georgian capital, Tbilisi.
He said the controllers said there were poor weather conditions but the plane could still land. But just before the landing, they told the crew to make another circle in the air before approaching the airport. Then the plane crashed.
Agadzhanov said the crew was highly experienced, the plane was in good condition and weather conditions were “certainly” the cause.
He said that the airline’s deputy general director, Vyacheslav Yaralov, had been aboard. The airline said that 26 Russians, a Ukrainian and a Georgian were among the passengers. The rest were Armenians.
Twenty-five boats as well as divers were involved in the search and a deep-sea robot was to be used to try to recover the plane’s black box, the Emergency Situations Ministry said.
The water temperature was 12C. Passengers’ personal belongings and plane fragments were found scattered at the scene over a one-mile area.
Relatives of those aboard the plane were gathering at Yerevan airport today for a charter flight to Sochi.
The Airbus A-320 was manufactured in 1995 and had been acquired on leasing by the airline. The aircraft underwent full-scale servicing a year ago.
