passengers Moscow (Reuters) – A Russian plane crashed and exploded into flames after takeoff Monday in a Siberian oil-producing region, killing at least 31 of the 43 people who were aboard, according to emergency authorities.
Thirteen survivors were pulled out of the remains on fire and taken to a hospital by helicopter, but one died later. Television images showed the plane broken in two in a snowy field. Only the tail and the back of the fuselage were visible.
Did not clear immediately what caused the crash of the ATR 72 aircraft of UTair, carrying 39 passengers and four crew.
“There is no explanation”, said the director of the regional Office of the Ministry of emergencies, Yuri Alejin, Russian television from the scene of the accident.
Alejin added that the black box had found, and added: “Contact was lost with the plane just three minutes after takeoff”.
UTair said on its website that the device, a twin-engine turboprop, was attempting to make an emergency landing when crashed 1.5 km of the airport of the city of Tyumen in Western Siberia, when heading to Surgut, an oil city located more to the North in Siberia.
At least five survivors were in critical condition, said the State RIA News Agency, quoting officials from a hospital in Tyumen, 1,720 kilometers east of Moscow.
Poor air history
UTair boasts three ATR-72 aircraft manufactured by the Franco-Italian manufacturer ATR, according to the website of the airline (www.utair.ru).
ATR is an egalitarian society between the two main companies of aeronautics in Europe, Alenia Aermacchi – a Finmeccanica company and EADS.
The accident is the worst air disaster in Russia as a Yak-42 plane crashed on the shore of a river near the city of Yaroslavl after takeoff on September 7, 2011, killing 44 people, which included members of the ice hockey team Lokomotiv Yaroslavl.
The Russian President, Dmitry Medvedev, called for a reduction in the number of Russian airlines and improvements in the training of the crew after this tragedy, which followed a crash in June with 47 dead, among them a sailor who had been drinking.
The International Association of air transport (IATA), said in December that global rates of air safety had improved in 2011, but in Russia and in the Commonwealth of independent States – which links former Soviet republics – had worsened. The Vice-President of IATA, Günther Matschnigg, security was a key problem in Russia that pilots and technicians of Earth are having to adapt to increasingly sophisticated planes.
Matschnigg said that Russian Aviation and political leaders have admitted that it should improve the training of pilots.
