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Investigators probe Russian plane disaster as relatives desperately

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  • Investigators probe Russian plane disaster as relatives desperately

    Investigators probe Russian plane disaster as relatives desperately seek news
    By MIKE ECKEL

    AP Worldstream;
    Jul 11, 2006

    Relatives and friends of passengers aboard an Airbus A310 that crashed
    at a Siberian airport went from one hospital to another Tuesday in
    hopes of finding survivors, while aviation officials struggled to
    explain Russia's second deadly passenger jet disaster in nearly as
    many months.

    Three other incidents involving Russian-operated planes occurred
    on Monday, including the crash-landing in Ukraine of a jet carrying
    Russia's navy chief.

    Several officers on board suffered burns. The two other incidents
    involved successful emergency landings after technical failures _
    adding more questions about the safety record of the nation's civil
    aviation industry.

    In Irkutsk, 4,200 kilometers (2,600 miles) east of Moscow, the Airbus
    airliner, operated by the company S7, careened off a wet runway and
    slammed into adjacent garages Sunday morning, bursting into flames.

    As of Tuesday, 125 of the 203 people aboard were confirmed dead,
    after one died in a hospital, the Emergency Situations Ministry
    said. Fifty-two remained hospitalized.

    The Russian prosecutors' office said 128 had died, including the
    hospital patient. Neither office could explain the discrepancy.

    Twelve of the most critically injured were transported to Moscow on
    Tuesday for medical treatment, and more were expected to be sent in
    coming days, regional government officials said.

    The preliminary investigation showed that the plane's braking
    system failed, Russian news agencies reported, citing unnamed
    sources. Transport Minister Igor Levitin said the two flight recorders
    were being analyzed.

    There were 193 passengers on the Moscow-Irkutsk flight Sunday _
    including 14 children _ and a crew of 10, the S7 press office said. At
    least 12 were foreigners, from Belarus, Poland, China, Germany and
    Azerbaijan, according to the flight manifest.

    At one Irkutsk morgue, dozens of people struggled to identify their
    loved ones, clustering around printed lists of the victims, which
    bore graphic, clinical details of the victims. One woman shouted in
    frustration at the line of police controlling the entrance to the
    morgue: "Can we just go and see the children? Can't we just identify
    the children?"

    Ivan Zotov said he lost his 32-year-old brother, who was returning
    from a vacation at the Black Sea resort of Sochi. His brother's wife
    and daughter had not learned of the death yet, since they were on a
    train home to Irkutsk.

    "It's ridiculous. It's like they're just a sack of potatoes. How can
    we figure anything out from these lists?" Zotov said, shaking his
    head in frustration.

    Levitin told reporters that authorities were looking into a proposal
    to lengthen the runway at the airport by 400 meters (a quarter-mile)
    and he announced financing for resurfacing the runway.

    The plane, built in 1987, had been regularly maintained and met all
    certifications, airline spokesman Konstantin Koshman said.

    The catastrophe was the second major commercial airline crash in two
    months in Russia. It was the fourth air crash in Irkutsk in the past
    12 years.

    In May, another Airbus crashed in stormy weather off Russia's Black Sea
    coast as it prepared to land, killing all 113 people on board. Airline
    officials blamed the crash of the Armenian passenger plane on driving
    rain and low visibility.

    Airline experts said though Russia's safety record is not yet up to
    Western standards, it is far better than during the chaotic post-Soviet
    period, when the state carrier Aeroflot split into hundreds of private
    carriers, many of which lacked funds to properly maintain and service
    their planes.

    "The safety record has improved a lot in recent years. In not all
    that long from now, it may be comparable with the West," said David
    Learmount, an aviation safety expert from the British weekly Flight
    International.
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