Dozens survive Kazakh air crash
12 KILLED Bek Air plane, carrying 98 passengers and crew, slams into a building shortly after take-off from Almaty
ALMATY, KAZAKHSTAN: A jetliner with 98 people aboard struggled to get airborne and crashed shortly after take-off on Friday in Kazakhstan, killing at least 12 people, authorities said.
The Bek Air jet, identified as a 23-year-old Fokker 100, hit a concrete wall and a two-story building soon after departing from Almaty, Kazakhstan’s largest city and former capital, airport officials said.
The aircraft’s tail also struck the runway twice during takeoff, indicating that it struggled to get off the ground, Deputy Prime Minister Roman Sklyar said.
Fifty-four people were reported hospitalised with injuries, at least 10 of them in critical condition, officials said.
The cause of the predawn crash was unclear. Authorities quickly suspended all Bek Air and Fokker 100 flights in Kazakhstan while the investigation got underway.
One survivor said the plane started shaking less than two minutes after take-off.
“At first, the left wing jolted really hard, then the right. The plane continued to gain altitude, shaking quite severely, and then went down,” Aslan Nazaraliyev told AP.
Government officials said the jet underwent de-icing before the flight, but Nazaraliyev recalled that its wings were covered in ice, and passengers who used emergency exits over the wings slipped and fell.
The weather in Almaty was clear, with temperatures just below freezing. The plane was flying to Nur-Sultan, the capital formerly known as Astana.
Video footage showed the front of the broken-up fuselage rammed against a building and the rear of the plane lying in a field next to the airport.
Passengers who survived may have been saved by the fact that the plane crashed at a lower speed and from a lower altitude because it was taking off, and it came down in terrain that may have eased the impact.
“The lower the speed, the lower the energy, and the fact that it lands on things that might not tear it up so much” all play a role, said Adrian Young, senior aviation consultant at the To70 consultancy in the Netherlands.
The plane, built in 1996, included safety features that have increased passenger survival chances since the mid1980s. Those features include stronger cabins less likely to crush or break apart and interior materials less apt to catch fire or emit toxic smoke.