Crew killed as plane crashes after take-off

A LARGE Russian airliner carrying 16 crew home after flight duty crashed in woods shortly after take-off from Moscow's biggest airport yesterday, killing at least 14 people.

The Pulkovo Airlines Ilyushin Il-86, Russia's answer to the jumbo jet and capable of carrying up to 350 passengers, was setting off for its home base in St. Petersburg, empty but for the flight and cabin crews, when it suddenly plunged to earth.

It was the second crash of a Russian-built plane in two days. On Saturday, 83 people died when a Russian-built Sukhoi jet fighter crashed at an air show in Lviv in Ukraine.

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.

An air police officer said two survivors had been pulled from the wreckage of the four-engine Il-86, but he believed one had later died. Moscow hospital sources indicated that two survivors were still being treated.

“I have never seen anything like this in all my years of service. There were body parts lying all around,” said a policeman, one of the first at the scene.

In the woods close to Moscow's Sheremetyevo-1 terminal, the plane’s tail section was clearly visible protruding from the trees, the airliner having cut a swathe through woodland around the airport and gouged a broad furrow in the earth.

A plume of pale, grey smoke drifted over the scene as rescue workers sifted through the wreckage, and a strong smell of scorched wood and burning hung in the air. A civil aviation official said workers had found the plane's black boxes.

The jet was returning to St. Petersburg after completing a routine flight to Moscow from the Black Sea resort of Sochi.

An official at the Emergencies Ministry said three bodies had been recovered from the wreckage so far. 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 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 3.25pm. Russian news agencies reported that a government commission to look into the causes of the crash had been formed and would start work straight away.

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.