4 dead in Moscow airliner crash

[undeterred]

Source: Houston Chronicle

By JIM HEINTZ, Associated Press | December 29, 2012 | Updated: December 29, 2012 11:02am

MOSCOW (AP) — A passenger airliner careered off the runway at Russia's third-busiest airport and partly onto a highway while landing on Saturday, broke into pieces and caught fire, killing at least four people.

Officials said there were eight people aboard the Tu-204 belonging to Russian airline Red Wings that was flying back from the Czech Republic without passengers to its home at Vnukovo Airport.

Emergency officials said in a televised news conference that four people were killed and another four severely injured when the plane rolled off the runway into a snowy field and partly onto an adjacent highway, then disintegrated. No collisions with vehicles on the major, multilane highway were reported. The plane's cockpit area was sheared off from the fuselage and a large chunk gashed out near the tail.

The crash occurred amid light snow and winds gusting up to 15 meters a second (30 mph), but other details were not immediately known. A spokesman for Russia's top investigative agency, Vladimir Markin, said initial indications were that pilot error was the cause.

Read more: http://www.chron.com/news/world/article/4-dead-in-Moscow-airliner-crash-4153914.php

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More pics at link. Horrible accident on the ground.

[SoapBox]

1. The TU-204

fyi

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tu-204

[jtuck004]

2. Sad for the victims. But this is the center of Moscow, days and nights of 15 degree cold or colder

wind at 30 with wind chills down to ? Snow, blowing snow, rain...

"initial indications were that pilot error was the cause."

Because it's against the rules to slide your plane off the runway.

Seems like ice would be more probable, though I can't know what those indicators were. There would be a difference in landing a fully loaded plane with the 210 people it can hold, vs the 8 they had on board, so maybe they came in too fast.

[Panasonic]

3. According to AV Herald

This was a positioning flight. It could have been worse.

[Blue_Tires]

4. from the airliners' forum:

http://www.airliners.net/aviation-forums/general_aviation/read.main/5646389/

[naaman fletcher]

5. Here is a video of the crash:

&feature=youtu.be

[Posteritatis]

6. Okay, those are the two luckiest drivers in Russia. (nt)