12 dead after plane crashes on takeoff

Kazakh airline flight strikes fence, house

ALMATY • Twelve people were killed and dozens injured when a plane with nearly 100 passengers and crew on board crashed soon after takeoff in Kazakhstan on Friday.

The Bek Air Fokker 100 got into trouble shortly after departing from Almaty, the Central Asian country’s commercial centre, on a predawn flight to the capital Nur-sultan.

It lost altitude during takeoff and broke through a concrete fence before hitting a two-storey building, Kazakhstan’s Civil Aviation Committee said. It was not immediately clear what caused the crash.

“The plane tilted to the left, then to the right, then it started shaking while still trying to gain altitude,” businessman Aslan Nazaraliyev, who survived the crash, told Reuters.

“Before crashing, the aircraft touched the runway with its tail twice, the gear was retracted,” Deputy Prime Minister Roman Sklyar said. “A commission ... will establish whether this was pilot error or technical issues. The runway was in an ideal condition.”

A Reuters reporter saw the battered remains of the front of the plane and other parts of the fuselage scattered around the house.

A survivor told news website Tengrinews she heard a “terrifying sound” before the plane started losing altitude.

“The plane was flying at a tilt. Everything was like in a movie: screaming, shouting, people crying,” she said.

Authorities initially put the death toll at 15 or more but later revised the figure to 12. They said 49 people were in hospital, some of them in a serious condition.

The plane had been carrying 93 passengers and five crew, and the interior ministry said the captain was among those killed.

The ministry said it was investigating a possible breach of flight operation and safety rules, a standard legal procedure.

Kazakhstan’s aviation committee said it was suspending all flights by carrier Bek Air and those of Fokker 100 aircraft pending the results of the investigation.

Nazaraliyev said he had been seated next to an emergency exit in row 15 and all the rows in front of him were torn off when the plane broke in half on impact.

“We got out through the emergency exit ... I and other men started getting people out and away from the plane. Some were trapped by concrete debris from the building. There were moans and screams and it was dark.”

The plane was built in 1996, and its most recent flight certificate was issued in May 2019.