Boeing 737
16-YEAR-OLD Boeing 737 that Aeroflot Nord had operated for just seven weeks crashed minutes before landing in Perm on Sunday, killing all 88 people on board. The plane burst into a ball of fire at an altitude of 1,000 metres, apparently after an engine caught fire, scattering debris across an area of 10 square kilometres.
Russian investigators ruled out a terrorist attack as the cause of a plane crash. The plane, which originated in Moscow, was making a second attempt at landing in "difficult" weather conditions. A preliminary investigation indicated that the accident probably occurred because one of the plane's two engines caught fire in midair. Twenty-one foreigners and seven children were among the 88 dead. Russia's chief Rabbi Chabader Berel Lazar immediately left for Perm to assist in the funerals of the 11 Russian Jewish victims. Pilot error was not completely ruled. A Perm airport dispatcher told Russian media the doomed plane's pilot had violated regulations.
Among the dead was 61-year-old General Gennady Troshev, who commanded troops in Chechnya until he was dismissed in 2002 by president Vladimir Putin after he publicly refused to accept a transfer during a power struggle within Russia's armed forces. Troshev was travelling to Perm to attend a wrestling competition.
Sunday's crash was the second involving a Boeing 737 in the former Soviet Union in the past month. A Boeing flying from the Kyrgyzstan to Iran crashed shortly after takeoff on 24 August, killing 64 of the 90 people on board. The pilot of that plane has been detained by prosecutors. Aeroflot Chief Valery Okulov announced he was stripping Aeroflot Nord of the right to use its name. The plane's flight recorders have been recovered and will take two to three weeks to be analysed. Russia's Echo Moskvye radio said US experts from Boeing have joined the investigation in the country's worst plane accident in two years.
photos: AFP
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