Flight data recorders examined after Moscow crash

Authorities are today examining flight data recorders from a Russian jet that slammed into a forest near Moscow just after take off, killing 14 people. Two flight attendants survived the crash.

The Pulkovo airlines Il-86 passenger jet was returning to St Petersburg after a flight from the Black Sea resort of Sochi when it went down just after leaving Sheremetyevo-1 airport.

The pilots did not have time to tell controllers there was a problem, aviation officials said.

The plane hit the ground so hard its front section was unrecognisable amid the wreckage, but two flight attendants who were in the tail section survived yesterday afternoon’s crash and were taken to Moscow hospitals.

There were only crew members - no passengers - on board.

All four cockpit crew members and 10 flight attendants were killed, officials said.

Identifying the bodies was slow work because of the destruction, but officials at Russia’s Interstate Aviation Committee said the ‘‘black box’’ data recorders were found in good condition, local reports said.

The plane crashed about 200 yards from the runway, authorities said.

The site is not far from a main road leading northwest out of Moscow, which was crowded at the time with Muscovites headed home from a hot summer weekend.

Maxim Khmelov, 13, was at a nearby beach with a friend trying to cool off on the clear, sunny day when he saw the Il-86 nose down and then bank before hitting the ground, sending up a plume of smoke went up ‘‘like a mushroom cloud’’.

One of the flight attendants, Arina Vinogradova, survived the crash with only an injured hand and bruises, and was able to sit up in her hospital bed in footage shown on RTR television.

‘‘She felt a frightful trembling,’’ said a doctor who treated her, Dmitry Fyodorovsky. ‘‘She did not think the plane was going to fall, but at this moment it started to crash.’’

The Russian newspaper Kommersant reported that investigators said it was possible the pilots brought the plane’s nose up too sharply on takeoff and lost control.

The crash came a day after another Soviet-era plane, an Su-27 fighter jet, ploughed through a crowd of spectators at an air show in western Ukraine, killing at least 83 people.