AT LEAST 40 DEAD IN FIERY LANDING OF AEROFLOT JET.
Dozens killed as fire breaks out on runway
MOSCOW • At least 40 people died when an Aeroflot airliner burst into flames while making an emergency landing at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport Sunday evening, officials said.
The Sukhoi SSJ100 operated by national airline Aeroflot had 73 passengers and five crew members on board when it touched down and sped along a runway spewing huge flames and black smoke.
Elena Markovskaya, a spokeswoman for Russia’s Investigative Committee, said early Monday that 41 people were killed. But Health Minister Veronika Skvortsova said later that 38 survived, implying the death toll was 40.
The victims included one member of the crew and at least two teenagers, according to the Investigative Committee.
Video showed passengers leaping out of the plane onto inflatable evacuation slides and staggering across the airport’s tarmac and grass, some holding luggage.
The airport said in a statement that the plane, which had taken off from Sheremetyevo airport for the northern city of Murmansk, turned back for unspecified technical reasons and made a hard landing that started the fire.
Video broadcast later on Russian television showed flames bursting from the jetliner’s underside as it lands and then bounces. The plane apparently did not have time to jettison fuel before the emergency landing, news reports said.
“I survived thanks to the stewardesses,” passenger Dmitry Khlebushkin told Russian reporters at the airport. He said the crew rushed to evacuate passengers as flames engulfed the fuselage.
The SSJ100, also known as the Superjet, is a two-engine regional jet put into service in 2011 with considerable fanfare as a signal that Russia’s troubled aerospace industry was on the rise.
However, the plane’s reputation was troubled after defects were found in some horizontal stabilizers.
The plane’s manufacturer, Sukhoi Civil Aircraft, said the plane in Sunday’s accident had received maintenance at the beginning of April. Aeroflot said the pilot had some 1,400 hours of experience flying the plane.
The plane is largely used in Russia as a replacement for outdated Soviet-era aircraft, but also has been used by airlines in other countries, including Armenia and Mexico.
This is the second fatal accident involving a SSJ100. In 2012, a demonstration flight in Indonesia struck a mountain, killing all 45 aboard.
Russia has long struggled with poor air-travel safety. A total of 326 people died in accidents on Russian-scheduled commercial flights between 2008 and 2017, according to the International Civil Aviation Organization. Sixty-one died on U.S. flights during the same period.