RTSat, 01 Sep 2018 08:30 UTC
© Ren-TVScreenshot
A passenger plane from Moscow has made a rough landing in Sochi, hitting a fence, losing a wing and catching fire.
It took the Utair-operated Boeing 737, arriving from Moscow, two attempts to land in Sochi, southern Russia, with strong wind and rain the likely cause of the failed first attempt. When the crew managed to land the plane, it overshot the runway and hit a fence.
After crashing through the fence, the plane plunged into a riverbed. The impact destroyed a wheel stand and one of the wings, and caused the left engine to catch fire, an Utair spokesman told RIA Novosti.
A video of the incident has appeared online, showing the plane engulfed in flames near the runway.
Some 18 people were injured as result of the incident, including three children, Russia's Health Ministry said. It was reported earlier that six people suffered from carbon monoxide poisoning, and four were hospitalized with burns. The injuries have been described as minor.
While there were no fatalities among the passengers or the crew, an employee of the airport in Sochi died from an apparent heart attack while responding to the incident.
The plane was carrying a total of 164 passengers and six crew. All of the passengers were evacuated as the incident unfolded.
Comment: Update 23:15 CETPassengers
have told how they miraculously survived when a Russian Boeing 737 slid off a runway in Sochi, crashing into a river and catching fire on both wings.
"We crashed, but it's OK, I guess," a man can be heard calmly saying in a short clip recorded minutes after the airliner crashed into a river in the southern Russian city of Sochi. The video shows flames blazing in the night, and some people can be heard shouting at the background.
Why the tendency by almost all media to assign blame to inanimate objects instead of people - in this instance the plane rather than the pilots (just as, more frequently, blaming guns instead of the shooter)?
It is almost certainly the aircrew that is to blame for the two passes, the rough landing, and overshooting the runway, not the airplane or the weather. Competent pilots are able to handle strong winds, cross-winds, rain, moderate turbulence, etc. and make perfectly fine landings, and/or are capable of making a decision to divert to an alternate airport with less challenging conditions. In this instance, an apparently incompetent pilot did neither.