More than 75 dead in air show crash
An Su-27 fighter jet crashed into a crowd of spectators at an air show today and exploded in a ball of fire, killing at least 78 people and injuring 115 in the western Ukrainian city of Lviv, emergency officials said.
The two pilots ejected and survived, the Defence Ministry said, just after the aircraft first touched the ground, slicing through a crowd of onlookers watching the show at the Skniliv air base among thousands who had come to watch the event under clear skies.
The Emergency Situations Ministry said the death toll could still rise because many of the injured were in critical condition.
The plane was in the sky for about two minutes, but then it appeared to go silent, headed toward the ground and banked left its wingtip clipping trees and touching another plane on the ground.
Video of the crash showed the jet then sliding backward along the ground on its left wingtip and nose before it began cartwheeling and then exploded, throwing off flaming debris.
The crew bailed out after the plane first touched the ground, and one of the ejection seats with its orange-and-white parachute was seen laying in a field at the base. The smouldering wreckage from the jet later sent clouds of black smoke into the air.
The Defence Ministry’s western operational command said engine failure was the preliminary reason for the crash, but ministry headquarters in the capital Kiev declined to comment on the cause and refused to confirm an engine malfunction.
’’I could only grab children and hold on. We were thrown away and hands and legs were flying all around us,’’ said one spectator, Zinovy, who didn’t give his last name. His back was injured as well as his child’s.
Parents frantically searched for missing children and used the public address system to call out their names.
Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma cut short his vacation in Crimea and arrived this evening in Lviv, viewing the accident scene before he was to visit the injured at hospitals.
He promised financial aid for victims’ relatives and the injured, and said a day of national mourning would be declared later in the week.
’’We will make sure that every family receives help,’’ Kuchma said. ‘‘This is a national issue, it doesn’t only concern the armed forces.’’
Kuchma ordered the secretary of the Defence and Security Council, Yevhen Marchuk, to head for Lviv and lead the government commission investigating the case which had already begun questioning the jet’s crew, along with other witnesses and watching video of the crash. Prosecutors also started an investigation.
Ukrainian officials are especially sensitive about air accidents after last October when an errant missile fired from a Ukrainian military base shot down a Russian plane, killing all 78 people on board, most of them immigrants to Israel.
The injured were being taken to several hospitals, including a special children’s clinic, said Oleksandr Kachkovskyi, an aide to the head of the Lviv regional administration. ‘‘The fire has been extinguished, but there’s lots of blood,’’ he said.
In Moscow, Russian President Vladimir Putin sent his condolences to Kuchma, the presidential press office said.
The fighter jet was conducting complicated aerial manoeuvres at the show, marking the 60th anniversary of a local air force unit.
The Sukhoi Su-27 has been in service since 1985. Its speed and manoeuvrability made it one of the key planes in the former Soviet air force, and it resembles the US F-15 Eagle fighter with two rear stabilisers and twin engines. The Su-27’s NATO code name is Flanker.
The programme at the air show, which featured Su-27 and Mig-29 warplanes, also included flights of gliders, light-engine planes and parachute jumping, Interfax news agency said.
A Sukhoi Su-30 jet a similar twin-engine design to the Su-27 crashed at start of the Paris air show in 1999, but the two pilots ejected and no-one was injured.
One of the most deadly crashes at an air show was at a US air base in Germany in 1988, when Italian jets performing a complicated manoeuvre collided and spiralled into the crowd, killing 70 and injuring at least 400.
