Two Plane Crashes in Russia last night, almost simultaneously =Oddy

http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/europe/08/25/russia.planecrash/index.html

Investigators probe Russia crashes From CNN Correspondent Ryan Chilcote Wednesday, August 25, 2004 Posted: 11:29 AM EDT (1529 GMT)

MOSCOW, Russia (CNN) -- Russian officials have rushed the flight data recorders from two airliners back to Moscow, where they will be decoded for clues to explain the near-simultaneous crashes of the two passenger jets.

They said Wednesday they had uncovered no signs of terrorist acts, but added that the investigation continued both in Moscow and at the crash locations.

The two planes crashed within minutes of each other Tuesday night after departing Moscow's Domodedovo Airport, killing all aboard.

Investigators found the two crash sites, about 725 kilometers (450 miles) apart, by dawn, but no survivors among the 89 passengers and crew who had been aboard.

The Russian Emergency Ministry told CNN crews had recovered the bodies of all 35 passengers and eight crew members flying aboard a Volga-Avia Express Tupolev 134 aircraft, but did not say how many bodies had been recovered from the second crash, a Siberia Airlines Tu-154.

The Siberia Airlines plane carried 38 passengers and eight crew, the airline said. Russian officials said the crash site spread over a 25 mile (40 km) radius.

The crashes brought immediate worries of terrorist attacks -- Siberia Airlines, in fact, said on its Web site that its air traffic control center notified it that the Tu-154 had activated a hijack alert.

But Federal Security Service (FSB) spokesman Nikolai Zakharov told Russia's Interfax news agency that "at this time, no signs have been found of terrorist acts."

Another spokesman said that the preliminary investigation of the crash sites has not revealed evidence of a terrorist act on board either plane, although the security service said terrorism was still on the table as a possible cause.

Zakharov said the investigation is focusing on possible fouled aviation fuel or pilot error, although witnesses heard explosions associated with the planes going down.

Pilots familiar with the Tu-154 told CNN that the planes' flight data recorders would be able to determine if there had been a "flameout," which takes place when jet fuel is contaminated with water.

But explosions would not occur from a flameout.

"Siberia Airlines does not exclude the possibility that the Tu-154 plane crash was caused by a terrorist attack," the airline's statement said.

"This is supported not only by the circumstances of the two air disasters taking place at the same time, but also by the telegram received by the Siberia Airlines Flight Control Center from the watch commander of the military sector of the main center of the Russian Unified System of Air Traffic Control just after the planes disappeared from radar screens."

The telegram, the airline said, noted that the two airplanes "simultaneously disappeared in Moscow and Rostov zonal centers. A hijacking warning alarm went off on one of the planes. I request the airport personnel to be more vigilant during passenger screening and boarding the plane."

Russia's chief of air control later told the airline the alarm had come from its plane "just before the loss of contact with the plane and its disappearance from the radar screens," the airline said.

The flight data recorders -- three from the larger Tu-154 and two from the Tu-134 -- may make clear what happened. The cockpit voice recorder, particularly, would tell investigators if anything happened inside the cockpit. Investigators said all five recorders were in good shape on the outside, but they could not vouch for the integrity of the recordings within until they opened them in Moscow.

Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the FSB -- the country's top intelligence agency -- to investigate the crashes, Russian authorities said, and a source told Interfax that authorities had launched a criminal investigation.

Putin, who had been vacation in Sochi -- the Black Sea resort that was the destination of the Siberia Airlines plane -- returned to the Kremlin.

The first plane, a Volga-Avia Express Tupolev 134, was en route to Volgograd when disappeared from radar at 10:56 p.m. (2:56 p.m. ET) Tuesday, and its wreckage was found about 100 miles (160 kilometers) south of Moscow near Tula, according to the Emergency Ministry.

"First I heard a roaring noise as if a plane was driving by my house," a witness said. "Then there were loud noises as if somebody was knocking on my window. I even went outside to check. There was nobody there so I went to bed."

Other witnesses told Interfax they saw the plane explode before it crashed.

The Siberia Tupolev 154 was about 100 miles (160 km) from Rostov-on-Don when it dropped off radar screens at 10:59 p.m., the state news agency Novosti reported.

Russian authorities said they had increased security at airports after an explosion at a Moscow bus station earlier Tuesday, which injured three people.

"If this were just one, you would look toward some sort of aircraft issue," Peter Goelz, a former managing director of the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board, told CNN. "But with two of them going down so close together, it's awfully ominous."

The incidents also took place just days before a regional election in the rebellious southern territory of Chechnya, where Russian troops have battled separatist guerrillas for the past five years.

Chechen separatists have been blamed for numerous bombings and other attacks in Russia in recent years, including the seizure of hundreds of hostages at a Moscow theater that ended with more than 100 hostages dead.

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