Three killed as Russian passenger jet explodes

Three people died when a passenger plane caught fire and then exploded on a runway at a Siberian airport, Russian officials said today.

Forty-three people were injured, 10 of them seriously.

Emergency services spokesman Vadim Grebennikov said the fire, which began in one of the engines as the plane taxied for take-off, caused a powerful blast which destroyed the Tu-154 aircraft and spread flames across 1,000 square metres (11,000 square feet).

Most of the passengers and crew were evacuated before the explosion.

Mr Grebennikov said 10 people were seriously injured, including six who were badly burned and four who suffered broken bones or other trauma.

Most of the other injured passengers sought treatment for poisoning after inhaling toxic fumes.

There were 124 people on board the stricken jet.

One witness described a chaotic scene as panicked passengers rushed through flames to escape the aircraft.

Russian television showed video taken with a mobile telephone of the burning plane, its centre a giant fireball. All that remained afterwards was the tail section and part of a wing.

The plane, which belonged to the regional Kogalymavia airline, was flying from the western Siberian town of Surgut to Moscow.

Among the passengers were members of the Russian pop group Na-Na, who described the panic on board the plane.

“When the engines were started up, something went wrong and the outer covering of the plane caught fire,” group member Vladimir Politov said by telephone, the RIA Novosti news agency reported.

“We had trouble opening the emergency exits and people began to really panic, with some of them running right through the flames.”

Politov said he and the other members of the group, which was popular in Russia in the 1990s, got out through an emergency exit over a wing and none of them was hurt.

All three engines on the Tu-154 are located in the back of the aircraft. Today’s fire appeared to have started in the engine mounted over the rear of the plane.

The Tu-154 has been the workhorse of the Soviet and post-Soviet civilian aviation industry, first entering service in the 1970s. But after a series of crashes involving the ageing fleet raised safety concerns, flagship carrier Aeroflot withdrew all of its Tu-154s from service, with the last flight a year ago.

The midrange jet remains, however, the mainstay of smaller airlines across Russia and the former Soviet Union. It is banned from parts of Europe due to excessive engine noise.

Just last month, two people were killed and 83 injured in an accident involving engine failure on a Tu-154. Two of the engines failed shortly after take-off from a Moscow airport and the third cut out as the plane made an emergency landing. It skidded off the snowy runway and broke apart.