Russian Airliner Crash Kills 88

A Russian investigator says the crash of a passenger jet that killed 88 people in a central Russian city was most likely caused by engine failure.
Vladimir Markin said in televised remarks that a failure of one of the Boeing-737-500's two engines may have caused Sunday's crash.
The plane was on its approach to land amid low cloud cover when it crashed into an unpopulated area of the city, just a few hundred meters from residential buildings.
A passenger jet travelling from Moscow to the Ural Mountains city of Perm
crashed as it was preparing to land early on Sunday, killing all 88 people
aboard, officials said.

Emergency Situations Ministry spokeswoman Irina Andrianova said there was no
indication of terrorism in the crash of the Boeing-737-500, which went down on
the outskirts of the city of Perm around 3:15 a.m. (2315 GMT).

Flight 821, operated by an Aeroflot subsidiary, carried 82 passengers and six
crew members, Aeroflot said.

It said among those killed were citizens of the United States, France, Turkey,
Switzerland, Germany, Italy and Latvia.

The US Embassy in Moscow said it has not yet been able to verify that the
person listed as an American is a citizen.

The plane was on its approach to land amid low cloud cover when it crashed
into an unpopulated area of the city, just a few hundred yards (metres) from
residential buildings.

Aeroflot officials said the plane was circling at about 3,600 feet (1,100
metres) in "difficult weather conditions" when it lost contact with ground
dispatchers.

"Dozens of witnesses of the crash have already been interrogated. The crash
site is being observed. There are several versions of the air crash. One of
the most possible is a technical breakdown," Vladimir Markin, a spokesman for
the federal prosecutors' Investigative Committee, said in televised comments.

Investigators have found the plane's "black box" flight recorders and were
working to analyze them.

A section of rail track was destroyed in the crash, which scattered paper,
clothing, life preservers and parts of engines for several hundred yards
(metres) along the track.

Sections of the plane's fuselage reading "Aeroflot" and "Boeing" lay askew on
the rails.

Part of the Trans-Siberian railway was also shut down as a result of the rail
damage said a spokesman for the national railroad company.

Officials said there were no deaths on the ground.

Perm is about 750 miles east of Moscow.

Russia and the other former Soviet republics have some of the world's worst
air traffic safety records, according to the International Air Transport
Association.

Experts have blamed weak government controls, poor pilot training and a
cost-cutting mentality among many carriers that affects safety.

No problems were reported with the 15-year-old jet when it was last inspected
at the beginning of 2008, Aeroflot deputy director Lev Koshlyakov said.

Russian Transport Minister, Igor Levitin told reporters on Sunday the plane's
black box had been found.

"It will be transferred to the International Aviation Commission which will
decode it," Levitin added.

Though unwilling to comment on the cause of the crash, Koshlyakov did however
say the possibility of a terrorist attack was "very doubtful".

Aeroflot director Valery Okulov said the company is ceasing cooperation with
the subsidiary that ran the flight.

The subsidiary, Aeroflot-Nord, will not be allowed to use the Aeroflot brand
name and code, he said.

"Our task is an all-out assistance to the investigation and finding real and
objective causes of the catastrophe," Okulov said at a later news conference
at the Moscow airport.

The subsidiary is majority-owned by Aeroflot but has its own fleet.

Okulov said relatives of the passengers who died will be offered free tickets
if they want to fly to the site of the crash. Eighteen relatives flew on
Sunday from Moscow.

Among those reported killed was Gennady Troshev, 61, an army general who
commanded troops in Chechnya.

Human rights activists had accused him of tolerating rampant abuses in the
war-ravaged republic.

Sunday's crash was the second involving a Boeing 737 in the former Soviet
Union in the past month.

A Boeing flying from the Central Asian nation of Kyrgyzstan to Iran crashed
shortly after takeoff on August 24, killing 64 of the 90 people on board.

The pilot of that plane has been detained by prosecutors in connection with
the investigation, officials said this week.