A Russian Jet Crashed in the Thunderstorm
A Russian jet Tu-154M of Pulkovo Airlines went down in Ukraine Tuesday, August 22, 2006. The plane was en route from Anapa family resort of the Black Sea to St. Petersburg, carrying 159 passengers, including 39 children, and the crew of 10. One of the reasons of the crash could be the weather conditions. The plane was caught in atmosphere turbulence and a thunderstorm, which destroyed its electronics. The terrorism story is ruled out completely.
The three-engine Tu-154M crashed near a village of Sukhaya Balka, 45km from Donetsk, Ukraine. There wasn't much left of the plane, as the fire consumed everything that could burn. Only the tail, engines and a fraction of fuselage with the letters OV (from Pulkovo) remained relatively intact.
The locals, who witnessed the tragedy, say a thunder storm began at first, a strong wind arose and there was a heavy shower with the rain falling almost horizontally because of the wind. They heard booming after a while – a jet came up from the clouds, heading directly at them.
“It fell down from the peak. Moving by wide circles, it went into a spin,” the witnesses say. “We thought the crew managed to lead the jet out of descending just before the land. It looked like it started steering out, but the altitude was not enough. The jet smashed into the hill near the lake, there was an awful explosion and the fire began.”
The village boys insist they saw the jet on fire in time of descending, but the grown-ups don't believe. Emergency officers also don’t think the plane caught fire in the air, saying the fire started when the jet hit the earth.
Rescuers worked all night long, gathering scattered bodies, packing them into black plastic bags and forwarding them to Donetsk for identification. No more than ten bodies have been identified so far.
Tu-154M took off for its last tragic flight from Anapa exactly on schedule, at 3:05 p.m. It was led by Krasnodar traffic controllers at first. “The flight was in the normal operations mode,” they said.
The deathly change occurred at 3:25 p.m., when the jet was taken by Kharkov controllers. The crew sent the first SOS at the altitude of 11,700 meters and repeated the signal twice afterwards, last time in two minutes at the altitude of 3,000 meters. At 3:39 p.m., Tu-154M disappeared from displays of controllers.
The explanations are different, though the terrorist story is completely excluded. According to the experts, the captain probably sent the first SOS when the jet was caught in a powerful thunderstorm and extreme turbulence. He requested emergency landing at Donetsk airport and proceeded to descending. But the lighting that struck the plane put its electronics out of action. The witnesses might have taken electric discharges on the jet’s body for the fire. Having lost control, Tu-154M went down for the deathly landing that killed 169 people.
www.kommersant.com
All the Article in Russian as of Aug. 23, 2006
|
