RUSSIA: A large Russian airliner carrying 16 crew home from flight duty crashed into woods shortly after take-off from Moscow's biggest airport yesterday, killing 14 people.
The Pulkovo Airlines Ilyushin Il-86, Russia's answer to the jumbo jet and capable of carrying up to 350 passengers, was setting off for its home base of St Petersburg, empty but for the flight and cabin crews, when it suddenly plunged to earth.
It was the second disaster involving a Russian-built plane in two days - following Saturday's crash at an airshow in Ukraine - and the third this month.
Although air-safety standards in the former Soviet Union have been under scrutiny for years, aerospace industry data indicated that this was the first fatal crash of an Il-86 since it entered service in 1980.
Officials said two survivors had been pulled from the smoking, charred wreckage of the four-engined aircraft.
"According to our information two people survived the crash.One of them was seriously hurt and taken to hospital, the other was in shock and is also in hospital," said Mr Sergei Belyayev, general director of Sheremetyevo airport.
Officials said no one on the ground had been hurt.
"I have never seen anything like this in all my years of service. There were body parts lying all around," a policeman said.
In the woods close to Moscow's Sheremetyevo-1 terminal, the airliner's tail section was clearly visible protruding from the trees. It cut a swathe through woodland around the airport and gouged a broad furrow in the earth.
A plume of pale grey smoke drifted over the scene as rescue workers sifted through the wreckage.
Mr Belyayev said the plane, which was returning to St Petersburg after completing a routine flight to Moscow from the Black Sea resort of Sochi, came down about 700 metres from the airport.
Officials said the Il-86's black box flight recorders had been retrieved and were being examined. But the deputy head of the crash investigation, Mr Leonid Kashirsky, said it was still too early to speculate on the cause.
A reporter for Russia's NTV television said he saw the plane climb sharply from Sheremetyevo-1, the Moscow terminal used mainly for domestic flights, and then drop out of the sky into a nearby forest.
A series of explosions followed, and a huge plume of smoke was still rising from the burning aircraft a couple of hours after the crash, which occurred at 3.25 p.m.
The 60-metre-long Il-86 is Russia's main long-distance airliner."This is a great tragedy. Before this the Ilyushin 86 had never had an accident," said Mr Anatoly Ivanov, head of flight services at St Petersburg's Pulkovo airport. "It's the most reliable, the safest plane in the world." - (Reuters)