A video grab shows rescuers near the tail of an Airbus A-310 which crashed at the airport of Russia's Siberian city of Irkutsk yesterday. - REUTERS
MOSCOW (AP):
AN AIRLINER careened off a rain-slicked runway in the Siberian city of Irkutsk early yesterday, plowing into adjacent garages and bursting into flames. At least 122 people were killed and 58 injured in the accident, the second major commercial airline crash in two months in Russia.
Passengers' relatives streamed to a crisis centre near the Mos-cow airport where the flight originated. Some stumbled out of the centre in silent shock, others anxiously clung to hope and one woman hurried out ecstatically, exclaiming into her mobile phone that a family friend had survived the disaster.
Preliminary data gathered by the commission investigating the crash indicate that the braking system on the Airbus A-310 operated by Russian airline S7 had failed, Russian news agencies reported, citing unnamed sources.
The plane was carrying at least 201 people on a flight from Moscow to Irkutsk.
CHILDREN AMONG DEAD
Airline spokesman Konstantin Koshman said there were 193 passengers including - 14 children aged 12 and under - and a crew of eight aboard. Emergency ministry spokes-woman Natalia Lukash said three people whose names were not on the passenger list were pulled unconscious from the wreckage; it was not clear if they had been on the ground or were flying as unregistered passengers.
Many of the children were headed to nearby Lake Baikal on vacation, according to Russian news reports, although Koshman said he had no details on that. Irkutsk is 4,200 kilometres (2,600 miles) east of Moscow.
The plane veered off the runway on landing and tore through a two-metre-high (six-foot-high) concrete barrier. It then crashed into a compound of one-storey garages, stopping a short distance from some small houses, about 7:50 a.m. (2250 GMT Saturday).
A witness said he heard a concussion and the ground trembled.
"I saw smoke coming from the aircraft. People were already walking out who were charred, injured, burnt," 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.
Transport Minister Igor Levitin blamed the wet runway.
"The aircraft veered off the runway. 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.
