122 die as aircraft ploughs into concrete barrier after landing

AT LEAST 122 people were killed early yesterday when a Russian passenger jet skidded off a wet Siberian runway, smashed through a concrete barrier and burst into flames.

Fourteen of the passengers were children on a holiday trip to Lake Baikal, one of Russia’s most popular tourist sites.

But a spokesman for S7, the airline operating the aircraft, said that it was not clear if there were more children among the bodies that had been retrieved from the burning fuselage of the Airbus A310 that had just landed in the city of Irkutsk.

Local emergency officials said there were 12 passengers unaccounted for and 58 were being treated in hospital for trauma, burns and smoke inhalation.

The aircraft carrying 204 people apparently landed safely but failed to brake and crashed through a 6ft (1.8m) concrete barrier and into a complex of garages.

The impact crumpled the front half of the aircraft and set off two explosions which engulfed it in flames.

“It was awful. I saw people burning, they were burning,” Margarita Svetlova, one of the survivors, told First Channel, the state-controlled television station. I probably lost consciousness for a minute . . . I unfastened my seat belt. I ran and started shouting and swearing, looking for an exit . . . The inflatable escape chute wouldn’t inflate, but I jumped all the same. I was lucky, I just hurt my leg a bit.”

Officials said that the only surviving air stewardess had opened an emergency exit at the rear of the aircraft, allowing ten passengers to escape, while firefighters rescued several others.

They said that 12 surviving passengers had already been sent home.

Images recorded by a witness on a mobile phone showed flames and thick black smoke billowing from the aircraft as rescuers clambered on top and cut away parts of the fuselage.

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

“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.”

Igor Levitin, the Transport Minister, said that the pilot radioed to the air traffic control tower saying the aircraft had landed safely, but was suddenly cut off.

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

A spokesman for S7 said that the aircraft had been regularly maintained and met all safety standards.

S7, which was previously called Sibir Airlines, grew out of the Siberian arm of Aeroflot, the state airline, after the downfall of the Soviet Union and is now Russia’s second biggest carrier.Russia earned an abysmal reputation for air safety in the 1990s as cash-strapped airlines struggled to maintain their ageing fleets.
But the country’s airlines have improved in recent years with some, like S7, investing in new Boeing and Airbus aircraft.

Airbus said that the plane, which was built in 1987, had made more than 10,000 flights. It is sending specialists to Russia to help to investigate the accident. The Prosecutor General’s office said that a technical fault or human error were the two most likely explanations for yesterday’s disaster — the second in Russia in as many months.

In May an Armenian airline’s Airbus crashed in stormy weather off the Black Sea coast of Russia as it prepared to land, killing all 113 people on board. Airline officials blamed the crash on low visibility because of bad weather. President Putin conveyed his condolences to friends and relatives of yesterday’s victims and declared today a national day of mourning.

Russian authorities also set up an improvised information centre at Domodedovo airport in Moscow, where friends and relatives of the victims were waiting for news of their loved ones last night.

PAST DISASTERS

August 2004: Chechen suicide bombers blow up two Russian aircraft with 89 passengers and crew

July 2002: 71 killed when Bashkirian Airlines aircraft crashes into cargo aircraft over Ãœberlingen, Germany

October 2001: Sibir Airlines Tu-154 shot down by errant Ukrainian Army missile. 77 people aboard

July 2001: A Tu-154 flying from Yekaterinburg to Vladivostok crashes, killing 145

March 2001: A Moscow-bound aircraft hijacked to Saudi Arabia. One passenger, one crew member and hijacker killed

Copyright 2006 Times Newspapers Ltd.