A Boeing-737 jet crashed near the Russian city of Perm early yesterday in the central Ural mountains killing all 82 passengers and six crew on board, including 21 foreigners, the jet’s owner Aeroflot said.
“The Boeing-737 carried 82 passengers on board, including seven children and six crew ... All passengers were killed,” Aeroflot said in a statement.
“There are foreign citizens among the victims, including nine from Azerbaijan, five from Ukraine, and one each from France, Switzerland, Latvia, the United States, Germany, Turkey and Italy,” the statement said.
Earlier the company denied that any foreigners were killed on flight 821 from Moscow to Perm.
Footage on Russia’s Vesti-24 television channel showed smoking wreckage strewn across a wooded area and investigators combing through the dark with flashlights.
“It was burning while still in the sky and it looked like a falling comet,” a female eyewitness told the channel.
“As the plane was coming in for landing, it lost communication at the height of 1,100m and air controllers lost its blip. The airplane was found within Perm’s city limits completely destroyed and on fire,” the Aeroflot statement said.
Earlier, investigator Vladimir Markin was quoted by the RIA Novosti news agency as saying that the airplane “fell into a ravine near the city limits.”
However, a ministry source quoted by RIA Novosti said that the plane fell just meters away from apartment houses, and that the entire area was cordoned off by police to help investigators.
An emergency situations ministry source quoted by RIA Novosti also claimed it was possible that three people who bought tickets for the ill-fated flight did not get on board.
The wreckage was strewn over some 4km2, officials said, adding that the flames had been completely put out.
The cause of the accident was not immediately clear, though a source quoted by RIA Novosti suggested that an engine failure could have sparked flames on board and led to the crash.
Both the airplane’s black boxes were found among the wreckage, Interfax news agency reported, citing investigators.
Aeroflot set up a crisis center for the victims’ relatives both in Moscow’s Sheremetyevo-1 airport and in Perm, including psychological aid, the company said.
The airline also pledged to pay “compensation on obligatory accident insurance in full ... up to 2 million rubles [US$80,000] per victim,” the company’s statement said.
Emergency Situations Minister Sergei Shoigu reported the accident to Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, the Kremlin press service said.
An investigative group headed by Transport Minister Igor Levitin was to fly out to the site.
The emergency situations ministry considered sending a rescue team to the site from Moscow, but later reported that “Perm had sufficient resources to deal with the search and rescue mission and decided to delay sending out experts from Moscow.”
The Trans-Siberian Railway, which was damaged in the accident, had been cut off on the stretch between Perm and Yekaterinburg, and all trains put on detour, local police officials said.
The airplane had been leased by Aeroflot from a Dublin-based company Pinewatch Limited in late July until March 2013, Aeroflot said.
Last year, 33 Russian aviation accidents left 318 dead — a sixfold increase over 2005 — raising serious concerns about Russia’s civil aviation, with experts pointing to major faults in the professional training of crews as well as Russia’s aging fleet of passenger jets.
An air safety commission announced in January that the average age of the country’s international airliners was 18, and its regional jets 30 years.
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