A Russian plane headed to an air base in Syria with 92 people on board, including members of a well-known military choir, crashed into the Black Sea minutes after taking off from the resort city of Sochi, Russia's Defence Ministry said.
There was no indication anyone survived the crash of the Tu-154, which belonged to the Defence Ministry and was taking the Alexandrov Ensemble to a holiday concert at the Hemeimeem air base in Syria’s coastal province of Latakia. Ships, helicopters and drones were searching the area for bodies on Sunday morning.
In a statement, the Kremlin said that Russian president Vladimir Putin expressed his "deepest condolences to the families and friends of those killed in the crash". He also ordered the prime minister, Dmitry Medvedev, to form a state commission to investigate the crash. It will determine whether safety breaches led to the crash.
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A total of 84 passengers and eight crew members were on the plane when it disappeared from radars two minutes after taking off in good weather.
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Emergency crews found fragments less than one mile from shore. There was no immediate word on the cause.
Viktor Ozerov, head of the defence affairs committee at the upper house of the Russian parliament, said the crash could have been caused by a technical malfunction or a crew error, but he believes it could not have been terrorism because the plane was operated by the military.
“I totally exclude” the idea of an attack bringing down the plane, he said in remarks carried by state RIA Novosti news agency.
The passenger list released by the Defence Ministry included 64 members of the Alexandrov Ensemble, among them its leader, Valery Khalilov. The ensemble is the official choir of the Russian military and also includes a band and a dance company.
Nine Russian journalists, including a TV crew from Channel One, were also among the passengers.
Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu was personally co-ordinating the rescue efforts, and President Vladimir Putin has received official reports.
The Tu-154 is a Soviet-built three-engine airliner designed in the late 1960s. More than 1,000 have been built, and they have been used extensively by carriers in Russia and worldwide.
In recent years, Russian airlines have replaced their Tu-154s with more modern planes, but the military and some other government agencies in Russia have continued to use them.
While noisy and fuel-guzzling by modern standards, the plane has been popular with crews that appreciate its manoeuvrability and ruggedness.
“It’s an excellent plane, which has proven its reliability during decades of service,” veteran pilot Oleg Smirnov said in televised remarks.
The plane that crashed was built in 1983, and underwent repairs in 2014, according to the Defence Ministry.
In April 2010, a Tu-154 carrying Polish president Lech Kaczynski and 95 others crashed while trying to land in bad weather at a sporadically-used military airport in Smolensk in western Russia, killing everyone on board.
Investigations by both Polish and Russian experts blamed pilot error in bad weather conditions, but Polish authorities have launched a new probe.
PA