Siberian air crash kills at least 122

An airliner careered off a rain-slicked runway, ploughed into adjacent garages and burst into flames in the Siberian city of Irkutsk early today.

An airliner careered off a rain-slicked runway, ploughed into adjacent garages and burst into flames in the Siberian city of Irkutsk early today.

At least 122 people were killed and 58 injured in the accident, the second major commercial airline crash in two months in Russia.

Passengers’ relatives streamed to a crisis centre near the Moscow airport where the flight originated.

Some stumbled out of the centre in silent shock, others anxiously clung to hope and one woman hurried out ecstatically, exclaiming into her mobile phone that a family friend had survived the disaster.

Preliminary data gathered by the commission investigating the crash indicate that the braking system on the Airbus A-310 operated by Russian airline S7 had failed, Russian news agencies reported, citing unnamed sources.

Airline spokesman Konstantin Koshman said there were 193 passengers - including 14 children under the age of 12 – and a crew of eight aboard.

Emergency Ministry spokeswoman Natalia Lukash said three people whose names were not on the passenger list were pulled unconscious from the wreckage; it was not clear if they had been on the ground or were flying as unregistered passengers.

Many of the children were headed to nearby Lake Baikal on vacation, according to Russian news reports.

Irkutsk is 4,200 kilometres east of Moscow.

The plane veered off the runway on landing and tore through a two-metre-high concrete barrier. It then crashed into a compound of one-story garages, stopping a short distance from some small houses, about 7.50am local time (10.50pm Irish time yesterday).

A witness said he heard a concussion and the ground trembled.

“I saw smoke coming from the aircraft. People were already walking out who were charred, injured, burnt,” Mikhail Yegeryov told NTV television.

“I asked a person who was in the Airbus what happened, and he said the plane had landed on the tarmac but didn’t brake. The cabin then burst into flames,” Yegeryov said.

Transport Minister Igor Levitin blamed the wet runway.

“The aircraft veered off the runway. There was rain, the landing strip was wet. So we’ll have to check the clutch and the technical condition of the aircraft,” he told Russian state television.

The Prosecutor General’s Office said that investigators considered a technical fault or human error as the two most likely causes of the crash, news agencies reported.

Koshman, the airline spokesman, said the plane, which was constructed in 1987, had been regularly maintained and met all certifications.

It took firefighters more than two hours to put out the fire, Emergency Situations Ministry spokeswoman Irina Andrianova said. There were two explosions caused by the fuel in the plane, Moscow radio reported.

President Vladimir Putin conveyed his condolences to family and friends of the victims and declared Monday a national day of mourning.

One air stewardess, Viktoria Zilberstein, opened the emergency hatch in the rear of the aircraft and let a number of passengers out, said the Emergency Ministry’s regional branch.

Ten passengers managed to escape this way and other survivors, including a pilot, were rescued by firefighters and rescuers from the burning wreckage, ITAR-Tass reported.

The transport minister said the aircraft’s two recorders had been recovered and were being deciphered.

Levitin added that the pilot had radioed ground control to say the aircraft had landed safely and then communication cut off.

On Sunday anxious and frightened relatives of passengers came to Moscow’s Domodedovo Airport, from where the plane took off. A crisis centre was set up near the airport to provide them information and aid.

A man who gave his name only as Vyacheslav, whose brother, wife and their four-year-old son were on the plane, sat on a stone curb outside a crisis centre near the airport fighting back tears.

“They’re not on the list” of passengers hospitalised, he said.

Later, a woman hurried out of the crisis centre smiling, dialled her cellular phone, and exclaimed: “Mama, Pashka is alive. He just went into a clinic.”

The woman, who declined to give her name, said the man was one of her brother’s two friends who were on the flight.

“We still have hope,” said 27-year-old Roman Gavrilov, whose father had gone to Irkutsk for a fishing trip with old army buddies.

In May, another Airbus aircraft 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.

Sunday’s disaster was the fourth air crash in Irkutsk in the past 12 years.

In January 1994, a Tu-154 aircraft crashed on takeoff from Irkutsk, killing 124 people. In December 1997, an An-124 military transport aircraft crashed in a residential area of the city, killing 72 people.

In July 2001, a Tu-154 Russian passenger plane crashed near Irkutsk, killing all 143 people on board.

S7, formerly known as Sibir, is Russia’s second-largest airline, carved out of Aeroflot’s Siberian wing after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Cash-strapped and saddled with ageing aircraft, regional airlines whittled out of Aeroflot were once notorious for their disregard for safety but their records have improved in recent years.

Koshman said there were 11 foreigners on board, from Germany, South Korea, Poland, China and Moldova.

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