Russian Airliner Crashes In Moscow
A Russian Il-86 cargo plane crashed into a forest Sunday shortly after taking off from Moscow's Sheremetyevo-1 airport, killing 14 people. There were two survivors, the Emergency Situations Ministry said.
The broken fuselage was visible in a ditch in a wooded area of birch trees and bushes several hundred meters from one of the airport's runways. Smoke was still rising from the smoldering wreckage. About two dozen ambulances and fire trucks were racing around the scene of the crash.
Vasily Nayuk, an official with the Emergency Situations Ministry said that according to preliminary information 14 people were killed and two stewardesses had survived and were hospitalized in critical condition.
The four-engined Ilyushin Il-86, Russia's answer to the jumbo jet and capable of carrying up to 350 passengers, had returned from the Black Sea resort of Sochi.
The Pulkovo Airlines jet was setting off to its home base in St Petersburg, empty but for the flight and cabin crews, officials at St Petersburg airport told Reuters.
Although air safety standards in the former Soviet Union have been under scrutiny for years, aerospace industry data indicated that this was the first fatal crash of an Il-86 since it entered service in 1980.
A reporter for Russia's NTV television said he saw the plane climb sharply from Sheremetyevo-1, the Moscow terminal used mainly for domestic flights, and then drop out of the sky on to its tail into a nearby forest.
A series of explosions followed, and a huge plume of smoke was still rising from the burning plane a couple of hours after the crash which occurred at 3:25 p.m.
Rescue workers were at the scene but there were no reports of people being injured on the ground, the reporter said.
"The Ilyushin 86 plane that crashed was carrying 16 people on board -- four flight crew and 12 air stewards," said an Emergencies Ministry spokeswoman.
The incident came a day after 83 people died when a Russian-built Sukhoi jet fighter crashed at an air show in Lviv in Ukraine, and almost a month after 71 people died when a Tupolev Tu-154 carrying Russian children to a holiday in Spain collided over the Swiss-German border with a cargo plane.
The 180-foot-long Il-86 is Russia's main long-distance airliner, and the first wide-body commercial aircraft built in the Soviet Union. It is comparable in size to the McDonnell Douglas DC-10 and Airbus A300.
Some 120 of the Il-86 planes have been built and are in use only by airlines from the former Soviet Union, mostly on high-density routes and charter flights.
It can fly at up to 540 mph for 3,840 miles before refueling.