Several people did survive the crash after escaping through a rear door and others were saved by rescue units and fire fighters including a member of the piloting crew. The plane slid off the runway and into a concrete barrier. The pilot radioed ground control to say the aircraft had landed safely and then communication cut off. A survivor reportedly said the plane had failed to brake after landing.This is the second major commercial airline disaster in two months for Russia. The plane was constructed in 1987 and had been regularly maintained and met all certifications. There were 201 people on board the plane at the time of the crash.
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Relatives streamed to a crisis center near Moscow’s Domodedovo airport, where the flight originated. Some stumbled out in silent shock. One woman ecstatically exclaimed into her cell phone that a family friend had survived.
After veering off the runway at about 7:50 a.m., the plane tore through a 6-foot-high concrete barrier, crashed into a compound of one-story garages and stopped a short distance from some small houses.
“I saw smoke coming from the aircraft. People were already walking out who were charred, injured, burnt,” a witness, Mikhail Yegeryov, told NTV television.
“I asked a person who was in the Airbus what happened, and he said the plane had landed on the tarmac but didn’t brake. The cabin then burst into flames,” Yegeryov said.
(photo from MSNBC)
Pilots regard the Irkutsk airport as difficult because its runway slopes and its concrete is especially slippery when wet, Vladimir Biryukov, an expert at the Gromov Aviation Institute, said on NTV.
Transport Minister Igor Levitin said the pilot had radioed ground control to say the aircraft had landed safely and then communication cut off.
“There was rain, the landing strip was wet. So we’ll have to check the clutch and the technical condition of the aircraft,” he told Russian state television. He said the aircraft’s two recorders had been recovered and were being analyzed.
He provided no further details and other Russian officials could not be reached for comment on the reports that the brakes on the plane may have failed.
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