| RAW Russia Plane Crash: Moment When Plane Crash In Russia Kills 50 Tatarstan Airlines 737-500 |
MOSCOW - The grainy airport video is dark, short and chilling. Within five seconds, a dot of light that Russian authorities say is a Boeing 737 appears in the sky over the tarmac and plunges to the ground in a near-vertical crash. The result is a blinding fireball.
The video shown Monday by Russian television stations of Sunday night's horrifying crash at Kazan airport that killed all 50 people onboard raises a host of questions, including why the plane's second attempt to land at night in good weather went so horribly wrong.
Russian investigators combed through the incinerated wreckage Monday after fire crews spent hours extinguishing the blaze. Experts from the NTSB, Boeing and the FAA were heading to the scene to help.
The Boeing 737 belonging to Tatarstan Airlines was making its second attempt at a landing in Kazan, 520 miles east of Moscow, according to Alexander Poltinin, head of the local branch of Russia's Investigative Committee.
The traffic controller at the Kazan airport who contacted the plane before the crash said the crew told him they weren't ready to land as it was approaching but didn't specify the problem.
Marat Zaripov, deputy head of the local branch of the Investigative Committee, initially told reporters that his team would look into all theories, including a terrorist attack. But the Investigative Committee said in a statement later Monday that it was now considering three possible causes: a technical fault, a pilot error or adverse weather conditions.
Poltinin said it could take weeks to identify the remains.
Investigators have found both of the plane's black boxes -- which record the plane's performance and the crew's conversations -- but said they were damaged.
The brief video taken by an airport security camera showed the plane going down at high speed at a nearly vertical angle and then hitting the ground and exploding. It was confirmed as authentic to The Associated Press by the emergency press service at Kazan airport and other Russian officials.
Magomed Tolboyev, a highly decorated Russian test pilot, said on Rossiya television that it wasn't immediately clear why the crew was unable to land on their first try in good weather.
U.S. National Transportation Safety Board spokesman Eric Weiss said Monday that a team of eight U.S. aviation safety experts were heading to Russia to assist: three NTSB crash investigators, a U.S. Federal Aviation Administration investigator and four experts from the plane manufacturer.
John Cox, an aviation safety consultant who flew 737s for 15 years for US Airways, said one of the first issues investigators will look at based on the nearly vertical angle of descent in the video will be whether the plane experienced an aerodynamic stall, which usually occurs when a plane slows to the point where its wings lose lift.
"Anytime you have an airplane that gets this vertical, the immediate suspicion is that it stalled," Cox said in an interview. "The airplane hit very hard ... it's in a lot of small pieces."
Cox, a former accident investigator for the Air Line Pilots Association, said it's unlikely the accident was the result of any design flaw in the 737, a short- to medium-haul jet. The plane was first introduced by Boeing in 1968, although there have been major changes in subsequent generations.
"It's a great machine," he said.
Friends of the air crash victims gathered on a central square in Kazan on Monday evening to commemorate the victims.
"I can only express my condolences and wish strength and endurance to the relatives of those who died," said Elmira Kalimullina, one of the friends.
Investigators have started looking through the company's records, which showed the plane was built 23 years ago and had been used by seven other carriers prior to being picked up by Tatarstan Airlines in 2008.
In 2001, it was damaged in a landing accident in Brazil that injured no one.
The company insisted that the aircraft was in good condition for the flight.
The carrier has had a good safety record but appears to have run into financial problems recently. Its personnel went on strike in September over back wages, and the Kazan airport authority has gone to arbitration to claim what it said was Tatarstan Airlines' debt for servicing its planes.
Industry experts have blamed some recent Russian crashes on a cost-cutting mentality that neglects safety in the chase for profits. Insufficient pilot training and lax government controls over the industry also have been cited as factors affecting Russian flight safety.
Former Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin said Monday the government should tighten its oversight of carriers and subsidize the upgrading of their fleets to improve safety.
Russia plane crash: Pilot error suspected
The plane is reported to have struck the ground at
about 450 km/h hour (280 mph)
Russian aviation experts say the
pilots of a Boeing 737 jet that crashed in Kazan on Sunday carried out a
manoeuvre that put the plane into a dive.
During a second attempt to land, the pilots switched to manual control and made a correction when the plane lost speed, the investigators said.
But the jet then nose-dived and crashed on to the tarmac, killing all 50 people on board.
According to the initial findings, the jet did not have any technical faults.
On-board recorder
The Interstate Aviation Committee (IAC), a body authorised to investigate civil air incidents in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) comprising former Soviet countries, said that its preliminarily findings were that the crash was caused by pilot error.
It said the two pilots failed to make a proper landing approach on the first attempt and then began a second run.
"Finding out that their attitude was not appropriate for landing, the crew started a go-around manoeuvre," the IAC said.
The report said the plane had lost speed in a steep climb then over-compensated, which sent it into a near-vertical dive.
The report drew its conclusions from data retrieved from one of the plane's on-board recorders, correspondents say, and the climb and subsequent plunge lasted only about one minute.
Continue reading the main story
The body investigating plane crashes is the Interstate Aviation Committee (IAC), which operates on behalf of the governments of Russia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine and Uzbekistan.
In recent years, its conclusions following major accidents have almost invariably blamed the pilots. Ex-Soviet pilots are frequently overworked, poorly trained and having to fly unfamiliar aircraft.
However, critics have questioned the IAC's analyses, pointing to inconsistencies in its accounts of specific accidents.
They have also argued that being a supranational body, the IAC is effectively unaccountable and has a conflict of interest in that it also certifies the fit state of planes, airlines and airports.
Analysis
Russia, combined with other ex-Soviet states, has some of the worst air safety records in the world, according to the International Air Transport Association (IATA). In 2011, the number of accidents for the region was triple the global average.The body investigating plane crashes is the Interstate Aviation Committee (IAC), which operates on behalf of the governments of Russia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine and Uzbekistan.
In recent years, its conclusions following major accidents have almost invariably blamed the pilots. Ex-Soviet pilots are frequently overworked, poorly trained and having to fly unfamiliar aircraft.
However, critics have questioned the IAC's analyses, pointing to inconsistencies in its accounts of specific accidents.
They have also argued that being a supranational body, the IAC is effectively unaccountable and has a conflict of interest in that it also certifies the fit state of planes, airlines and airports.
Such "loss of control" accidents are responsible for
more deaths than any other type of plane crash because they are rarely
survivable, the US-based Flight Safety Foundation was quoted by the AP news
agency as saying.
BBC regional analyst Pavel Fedenko says that in recent years the IAC's conclusions following major accidents have almost invariably blamed the pilots.
Critics have questioned its analyses pointing to inconsistencies, our correspondent adds .
The Boeing 737 was arriving from Moscow and crashed at about 19:20 local time (15:20 GMT) on Sunday.
It was raining at the time but the weather conditions were favourable for landing, officials say.
The fuel tanks exploded on impact and it took hours to extinguish the blazing wreckage.
Tatarstan Airlines said that both pilots were very experienced and no technical problems had been reported with the plane before the flight.
Airline head Taksan Giniyatullin told a news conference on Tuesday in Kazan that the flying experience of the two pilots ranged from 1,900 to 2,500 hours - and that they had undergone "all the necessary instruction".
But he said that the crew apparently had no experience with attempting a second landing.
Reports said the pilot, 47-year-old Rustem Salikhov, had already tried to land several times before crashing.
The crew also said that they were not ready to land because of technical problems, Russian news agencies reported.
A journalist who said she had flown on the same aircraft from Kazan to Moscow earlier on Sunday told Russia's Channel TV that there was a strong vibration during the landing in the Russian Capital.
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