PRAGUE - Investigators are
still puzzling over the crash of two passenger jets that
flew out of Moscow's Domodedovo Airport within 40
minutes of each other on Wednesday night and which
crashed within three or four minutes of each other,
killing nearly 100 people.
Sergei
Ignatchenko, head spokesperson for the FSB intelligence agency,
said the main scenario under investigation involved
pilot or technical error. "Several scenarios are being
considered. The main scenario is violation of civil
aircraft regulations," Ignatchenko said. "A terrorist
act is also being considered as a possible cause, but
there has been no evidence found up to this moment that
it was a terrorist act."
The director of Volgograd
International Airport, Yurii Dmitriev, told journalists
that he fully excludes pilot error as a reason
for the crashes. "I exclude pilot error because even
in the most difficult conditions arising in an aircraft
of that type, such as a control malfunction or a
fire on board the aircraft, crew members always have
time to relay the information to [air-traffic
controllers on] the ground," Dmitriev said.
There are fears the two planes may have been
sabotaged by separatist militants from the rebellious
republic of Chechnya, which is due to elect a new
president this weekend. Rebels have been blamed for a
series of terror acts in Russia in recent years.
Separatists launched a major raid in the local
capital Grozny last week and promised more to come ahead
of the elections.
However, Akhmed Zakaev,
a spokesman for Chechen separatist leader Aslan
Maskhadov, said Maskhadov was not connected in any way to the
near-simultaneous crashes.
A second spokesman,
speaking to alJazeera Arabic television, said the
separatist government "has nothing to do with terrorist
attacks. Our attacks only target the military."
In a recent interview with Radio Free
Europe/Radio Liberty, Maskhadov said he had reached an
agreement with radical Chechen field commander Shamil
Basaev that terrorist acts only harm the cause of
Chechen resistance.
The first plane, a
Tupelov-134 jet bound for Volgograd, crashed in the Tula
region, near the village of Buchalki, some 200
kilometers south of Moscow. All 44 passengers, including
nine crew members, were killed. Some witnesses say
the plane exploded in the air before it crashed, but
other reports cast doubt on this.
Russian
Emergency Situations Minister Sergei Shoigu said that
"regarding the Tu-134 near Tula, one of the flight
recorders has been found in good condition and the
search for the second flight recorder is ongoing and
practically all the bodies of those who perished have
been found".
ITAR-TASS later reported that all
the flight and chart recorders from both planes have
been found and brought to Moscow for investigation.
The small Volga-Aviaekspress airline, which
owned the Tu-134, said all necessary security checks had
been made prior to the flight. The company's director,
Yurii Baichkin, was reportedly piloting the plane at the
time of the crash. Air-traffic controllers said they
received no distress signals before the plane
disappeared from their radars.
Minutes
later, controllers also lost track of a second plane, a
Tu-154 carrying 46 passengers, including eight crew
members. The plane, bound for the Black Sea resort town of
Sochi, came down in the Rostov region, some 960km
south of the capital.
Russia's Interfax
news agency quoted a source saying the plane, owned by
the Sibir air company, had sent out a hijack alert
shortly before it disappeared. However, later the agency
quoted an unnamed law-enforcement official as saying the signal
had been a general distress alert.
The
Tu-154 wreckage was found about nine hours after the
plane's disappearance. An Emergency Situations Ministry
official in Rostov told the Associated Press that the
plane apparently broke up in the air and that the wreckage
was spread over some 40-50km. The fuselage and tail
lay a few hundred meters apart at the edge of a forest.
Copyright (c) 2004 RFE/RL Inc.
Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free
Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave NW,
Washington, DC 20036
