Vesti TV footage of the Boeing jet wreckage
Last Sunday morning Aeroflot Nord Flight 821 crashed near the city of Perm in the Ural Mountains, killing all 81 passengers and crew members on board. The flight took off from Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport around midnight and crashed into a ravine several miles from the Perm airport at 3:10 a.m. Moscow time. The cause of the crash remains unknown. Russia's Air Accident Investigation Commission of the Interstate Aviation Committee is leading the investigation, with assistance from the American National Transportation Safety Board, the U.S. Federal Aviation Authority, and Boeing.
Wreckage of Flight 821 scattered in a ravine near the city of Perm
The leased Boeing 737-500 jet was 16 years old and had been previously operated by a Chinese airline, Xiamen Airlines/China Southwest Airlines, and had an unblemished safety record. Aeroflot is the safest passenger carrier among all Russian airlines, and has not suffered a crash since 1994. Aeroflot had leased the jet from the Dublin, Ireland-based firm Pinewatch Limited.
When the aircraft first went down, some in the Russian media suspected terrorism, as Colonel General Gennady Troshev, a former commander of the North Caucasus Military District (including Chechnya) during the Second Chechen War and key defense advisor to President Medvedev was killed in the crash. According to the Krasnaya Zvezda (Red Star) military newspaper, the late General was popular with his men during the second Chechnya campaign. Troshev was the son of a career military officer and had been decorated with the Golden Star of a Hero of Russia for his service to the nation.
Russian accident investigators have denied that terrorism was the cause and after recovering the plane's two "black box" recorders, they are focusing on the possibilities of either pilot error or engine failure. Air traffic controllers on duty that night have claimed that the pilot acknowledged their instructions but began to behave erratically, turning the aircraft left instead of right and gaining altitude rather than descending on approach. Shortly thereafter, the plane dropped off air traffic control radar and the pilot's scream was captured by the cockpit recorder before impact.
The Komolskaya Pravda newspaper, the most widely read (and usually pro-government) tabloid in Russia, has published severe criticisms of the civil aviation industry in the Russian Federation. "Why are Russian airline companies forced to shop abroad for used aircraft?" asks the headline. In a two page round-table-like discussion, the paper cites many aviation analysts complaining about high import taxes on sophisticated spare parts used in Boeing and Airbus planes, which may prompt regional airlines to purchase cheaper replacement parts of dubious origin in order to keep their costs low. Another contributor says there are simply not enough new Russian airplanes for domestic routes, forcing airlines to lease used foreign jets. Another analyst from the Russian ministry that oversees pilot safety training in Russia declared that most pilots find themselves overwhelmed by historic crash scenarios in flight simulators and almost all routinely fail to "save" the airplane.
Clearly, something went terribly wrong on board Aeroflot Nord Flight 821. Aviation analysts and veteran pilots have told the Russian media that even if one engine had failed, the Boeing should have still been able to land with power from the other engine. Three individuals who were scheduled to board missed their connecting flight from Barcelona to Moscow were spared, resulting in the initial discrepancy between passengers on board and the list of scheduled passengers.
Click here to read more about Flight 821 over at Wikipedia.
Russia Today has published a list of passengers and crew on board here, which includes citizens of Azerbaijan, Ukraine, Germany, Turkey,China, and the United States.
The Aeroflot web site set up for insurance payments to families of the victims is here.
