After the plane landed off the runway, it broke up and flipped over.
Photo: AP
| Other Photos |
 |
|
 |
Plane Flips upon Landing in Samara
// Missed runway by 400 meters
A UTair Aviation Tu-134 plane flying the airline's Surgut-Samara-Belgorod route landed 400 meters short of the runway in Samara on Saturday. As a result, the plane flipped over and broke up. Of the 57 people on board, six died and 27 were hospitalized. The prosecutor says that the accident was caused by mistakes by the crew. UTair says the weather is to blame.
Flight 65021 left Surgut at 7:10 a.m. Moscow time on Saturday with 57 people on board, including five children and a crew of seven. The plane received permission to land at Kurumoch Airport in Samara but touched down 400 meters short of the runway at 9:43 and skidded about half a kilometer through a field to the right of the runway. The plane then flipped on its left wing and caught fire. Fragments of the fuselage were scattered over a radius of 500 meters. “The impact was so strong that the fuselage split in half,” witness Nikolay Manishin told Kommersant.
Passenger Oleg Nosenko recounted what happened to him. “There were no problems on the flight, but when we landed, strong shaking and vibrating began,” he said. “Women and children began to scream. I hit my head on something and lost consciousness. When I came to, I saw that the fuselage was split near my seat. I undid my seat belt and fell to the ground. I saw that the passengers who were able to get loose by themselves were gathering around the wreckage. I noticed many of them had battered faces and torn clothes. I remember a guy whose hand was torn off.” Nosenko also suffered trauma to the face and a torn ear. He said that a fire brigade arrived as the passengers who had left the plane were moving toward the airport. They extinguished a small fire on the wing.
According to UTair Aviation, six passengers died in the crash. Their names are Viktor Vasetsky, Ekaterina Cheprasova, Nikolay Cheprasov, Galina Petrosyan, Marina Sorokina and Nadezhda Uglevataya. They were all sitting in the 11th row, which is where the plane split apart. They have been identified and their bodies will be returned to their native city fort burial tomorrow. Among those hospitalized in Samara were the plane's captain Oleg Zubkov, copilot Andrey Lapanov, flight engineer Alexander Muratov and chief purser Inga Khitrova. “The main traumas were bruises and breaks,” Kommersant was told by a manager at the Samara Region division of the Emergencies Ministry. He said that the injuries occurred on impact with the ground and that four people were in serious condition.
The flight recorders from the plane were taken yesterday to the Interstate Aviation Committee for deciphering yesterday. Deputy Transportation Minister Boris Korol stated that the recordings are in good condition. A Prosecutor General's Office spokesman said that preliminary data indicate that the cause of the crash was an error made by the crew. The Samara regional prosecutor has initiated a criminal case under article 263, part 3, of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (“Violation of Rules of Safe Movement and Use of Air Transport Leading to the Negligence Death of Two or More People”).
Members of the crew with whom investigators and journalists were able to speak with gave contradictory accounts. Flight engineer Muratov said that the flight went without incident and there were no technical malfunctions. He added that the malfunction of the plane's instrument landing system took place during an earlier flight, and not on that flight. There is information that the same plane made a rough landing at the same airport a year ago because of a problem with that system. Muratov suggested that, because the ILS navigation system only “worked periodically,” the flight crew may have chosen a “golden mean so as not to trust that undependable instrument.” Commander Zubkov said that visibility was practically zero and he did not see the ground until the last moment. They switched the engines to takeoff but it was too late to avoid hitting the ground. The crew believes it acted correctly.
Experts suggest that the crew may have decided that the navigation system was malfunctioning and switched to manual control. There is nothing criminal in that, the pilots say. Pilots usually switch to manual at the last 50 meters before landing. The switch would be made when the plane cleared the low cloud around Kurumoch that day. However, the plane descended into fog and the pilots became disoriented.
Experts say that the crew appears to have had no navigational instruments working, which they considered highly unlikely, or else the crew made no attention to them at all. Investigators say that, if the instrumentation had failed, and visibility was so critical, the commander should have made a second circle and not risked landing to wait for acceptable weather or proceed to the alternative airport.
UTair Aviation claims that the plane was in working order right up until the time it hit the ground. “The Tu-134 complied with all norms of airworthiness and had undergone all necessary technical servicing,” said UTair general director Andrey Martirosov. The plane was 30 years old, but had been used by UTair for only three years. Martirosov said that the low number of victims in the crash is a sign that the craft is well built. He added that the company had decided to increase the amount of compensation to the victims from 100,000 rubles to $75,000. “We will do everything possible to satisfy passenger claims out of court,” he said. He said that the company would not press any claims against the crew.
The airline names the rapidly deteriorating weather as the most likely cause of the crash. “The weather was classified as complex,” said head of the UTair press service Yury Mushikhin. “The plane received permission to land and Commander Oleg Zubkov could do that in those conditions. But the weather changed suddenly. There was heavy fog during the landing and that was officially recorded measures taken after the event.”
Pavel Sedakov, Samara; Nikolay Yablonsky, Surgut; Nikolay Sergeev
All the Article in Russian as of Mar. 19, 2007
|
|
|
