S7 Airline Airbus A310-300 plane crash
Irkutsk, Russia
Updated on
The Sibir (S7) airline Airbus A-310 was on a passenger flight from Moscow to Irkutsk (Siberia, regional capital close to
Lake Baikal) with 203 people on board. While landing, the aircraft overshot the runway, smashed through a concrete fence,
struck garages and caught fire.
74 people escaped from the wreckage through the rear of the jet, many of them seriously injured. At least 129 people were
killed. The front of the fuselage was completely destroyed by the blaze, which took fire-fighters three hours to
extinguish.
It is established that the aircraft veered off the runway in rain. Black boxes need to be analysed to understand the cause
of the accident. Crew errors are not excluded. Braking systems malfunctions may also have contributed to the accident.
S7 Airlines was known until recently as Sibir, or Siberia Airlines. It is the second largest Russian airline, after the
state-controlled Aeroflot, with 100 flights a day out of its hubs in Moscow, Irkutsk and Novosibirsk in Siberia.
