Post by corsair67 on May 4, 2006 11:02:20 GMT 12
From The Australian.
Jet crash kills 113 in Black Sea
Correspondents in Adler, Russia
May 04, 2006.
DIVERS searched storm-churned waters off Russia's Black Sea coast last night for the remains of 113 people who were killed when a plane flying from Armenia to southern Russia crashed.
The Russian Emergency Situations Ministry said eight crew and 105 passengers, including six children, had been aboard the Airbus A-320, flying from the Armenian capital, Yerevan.
Armenian officials blamed the crash on the stormy weather. Clouds were as low as 100m above the ground at the time of the crash.
Earlier, however, Russian officials said that the age of the aircraft and technical factors could have been involved.
Investigators said they did not believe terrorism was a factor.
The plane, which belonged to the Armenian airline Armavia, disappeared from radar screens about 6km from the shore and crashed after making a turn and heading toward the Adler airport near the Russian resort of Sochi.
Armavia commercial deputy Andrei Agadzhanov said the airline's deputy general director, Vyacheslav Yaralov, had been aboard the flight.
Gurgen Seroboyan, whose 23-year-old fiancee, Lucenie Gevorkian, was a flight attendant on the plane, wept as he waited at Yerevan airport for a charter flight that was to take relatives of the victims to Sochi.
"We were planning to get married and then this tragedy happened," Mr Seroboyan said.
Samvel Oganesian said his 23-year-old son, Vram, and his friend Hamlet Abgarian had been heading to Sochi for vacation.
"Why did he go?" an anguished Mr Oganesian asked.
In Sochi's airport, about 100 relatives - nearly all Armenians - kept vigil in a waiting hall.
One man became hysterical and had to be taken away by ambulance.
Russian President Vladimir Putin and Armenian President Robert Kocharian had declared a day of mourning in both countries, the Kremlin said.
Wreckage from the plane was recovered not far from the shoreline, and thefuselage was found at a depth of 400m, Emergency Situations Ministry officials said.
Search and rescue teams last night had pulled 33 bodies from the water.
None was wearing a life jacket, indicating they did not have sufficient warning to prepare for an emergency landing.
The airline said 26 Russians, one Ukrainian and one Georgian were among the passengers. The rest were Armenian citizens.
Twenty-five boats were involved in the search, officials said.
Divers and a deep-sea robot were searching for the plane's black boxes.
But a Russian aviation official, Rudolf Teymurazov of the Intergovernmental Aviation Committee, expressed doubt that the black boxes could be found, saying some parts of the plane could be as deep as 2km.
"If the black boxes are located not in some segment of the plane, but on the (sea) bottom, then it will be impossible to find them," the ITAR-Tass news agency quoted him as saying.
Rough seas, driving rain and low visibility were hampering the search, Russian news agencies reported. A Russian ministry spokesman said the plane disappeared from radar screens about 2.15am, local time. It went down while trying to make a repeat attempt at an emergency landing.
AP, Reuters
Jet crash kills 113 in Black Sea
Correspondents in Adler, Russia
May 04, 2006.
DIVERS searched storm-churned waters off Russia's Black Sea coast last night for the remains of 113 people who were killed when a plane flying from Armenia to southern Russia crashed.
The Russian Emergency Situations Ministry said eight crew and 105 passengers, including six children, had been aboard the Airbus A-320, flying from the Armenian capital, Yerevan.
Armenian officials blamed the crash on the stormy weather. Clouds were as low as 100m above the ground at the time of the crash.
Earlier, however, Russian officials said that the age of the aircraft and technical factors could have been involved.
Investigators said they did not believe terrorism was a factor.
The plane, which belonged to the Armenian airline Armavia, disappeared from radar screens about 6km from the shore and crashed after making a turn and heading toward the Adler airport near the Russian resort of Sochi.
Armavia commercial deputy Andrei Agadzhanov said the airline's deputy general director, Vyacheslav Yaralov, had been aboard the flight.
Gurgen Seroboyan, whose 23-year-old fiancee, Lucenie Gevorkian, was a flight attendant on the plane, wept as he waited at Yerevan airport for a charter flight that was to take relatives of the victims to Sochi.
"We were planning to get married and then this tragedy happened," Mr Seroboyan said.
Samvel Oganesian said his 23-year-old son, Vram, and his friend Hamlet Abgarian had been heading to Sochi for vacation.
"Why did he go?" an anguished Mr Oganesian asked.
In Sochi's airport, about 100 relatives - nearly all Armenians - kept vigil in a waiting hall.
One man became hysterical and had to be taken away by ambulance.
Russian President Vladimir Putin and Armenian President Robert Kocharian had declared a day of mourning in both countries, the Kremlin said.
Wreckage from the plane was recovered not far from the shoreline, and thefuselage was found at a depth of 400m, Emergency Situations Ministry officials said.
Search and rescue teams last night had pulled 33 bodies from the water.
None was wearing a life jacket, indicating they did not have sufficient warning to prepare for an emergency landing.
The airline said 26 Russians, one Ukrainian and one Georgian were among the passengers. The rest were Armenian citizens.
Twenty-five boats were involved in the search, officials said.
Divers and a deep-sea robot were searching for the plane's black boxes.
But a Russian aviation official, Rudolf Teymurazov of the Intergovernmental Aviation Committee, expressed doubt that the black boxes could be found, saying some parts of the plane could be as deep as 2km.
"If the black boxes are located not in some segment of the plane, but on the (sea) bottom, then it will be impossible to find them," the ITAR-Tass news agency quoted him as saying.
Rough seas, driving rain and low visibility were hampering the search, Russian news agencies reported. A Russian ministry spokesman said the plane disappeared from radar screens about 2.15am, local time. It went down while trying to make a repeat attempt at an emergency landing.
AP, Reuters
