Current event Jesse Taylor Marshall Warner On April 2nd 2012 a Russian passenger plane crashed into a snowy field in Siberia shortly after takeoff Monday, killing 31 of the 43 people on board, officials said. The 12 survivors were hospitalized in serious condition.
The ATR-72 turboprop operated by UTair took off at 7:40 a.m. from Tyumen, a regional center in Siberia about 1,000 miles east of Moscow, heading for the oil town of Surgut, about 400 miles away.
The plane came down in a field about two miles away from the Tyumen airport, breaking into three sections upon impact. Part of it was destroyed by a fire that burned at least six people to death, said Sergei Kiselyov, the police chief at the Roshchino airport in Tyumen.
The cause of the crash was not immediately clear, but investigators said evidence so far points to a technical failure of the French/Italian-made twin-engine aircraft. They noted that witnesses reported seeing smoke coming from its engines as the plane came down and said the pilots had tried to return to the airport.
The federal Investigative Committee said while equipment failure appeared to be the most likely cause of the crash, pilot error or mistakes by traffic controllers had not been ruled out.One survivor stood up on his own and waited until he was given medical help and only then felt worse," Kiselyov told the state news agency RIA Novosti.
Russia has seen a string of deadly crashes in recent years. Some have been blamed on the use of aging Soviet-era aircraft, but industry experts point to a number of other problems, including poor crew training, crumbling airports, lax government controls and widespread neglect of safety in the pursuit of profits.
Jesse Taylor
Marshall Warner
On April 2nd 2012 a Russian passenger plane crashed into a snowy field in Siberia shortly after takeoff Monday, killing 31 of the 43 people on board, officials said. The 12 survivors were hospitalized in serious condition.
The ATR-72 turboprop operated by UTair took off at 7:40 a.m. from Tyumen, a regional center in Siberia about 1,000 miles east of Moscow, heading for the oil town of Surgut, about 400 miles away.
The plane came down in a field about two miles away from the Tyumen airport, breaking into three sections upon impact. Part of it was destroyed by a fire that burned at least six people to death, said Sergei Kiselyov, the police chief at the Roshchino airport in Tyumen.
The cause of the crash was not immediately clear, but investigators said evidence so far points to a technical failure of the French/Italian-made twin-engine aircraft. They noted that witnesses reported seeing smoke coming from its engines as the plane came down and said the pilots had tried to return to the airport.
The federal Investigative Committee said while equipment failure appeared to be the most likely cause of the crash, pilot error or mistakes by traffic controllers had not been ruled out.One survivor stood up on his own and waited until he was given medical help and only then felt worse," Kiselyov told the state news agency RIA Novosti.
Russia has seen a string of deadly crashes in recent years. Some have been blamed on the use of aging Soviet-era aircraft, but industry experts point to a number of other problems, including poor crew training, crumbling airports, lax government controls and widespread neglect of safety in the pursuit of profits.