Russia sees two airplane crashes

[muriel_volestrangler]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3596354.stm

A plane with 62 people on board has reportedly crashed in the Russian region of Tula.

The Itar-Tass news agency reports that the plane went down about 180km (110miles) south of the capital, Moscow.

The were 54 passengers and eight crew on board, the agency said.

BBC ticker says 2nd plane crash, 44 people on board, near Rostov.

update: CNN says planes took off from same airport, disappeared from radar within 4 minutes of each other.

http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/europe/08/24/russia.planecrash/index.html

[TheRovingGourmet]

1. What are the odds on two crashing at the same time?

[htuttle]

2. It seems unlikely

I don't think I've actually exhaled since I read this.

Waiting for the other shoe(s) to drop, I guess.

[TheCentepedeShoes]

24. Now you know

the reason for my DU name.
But seriously, this is tragic no matter the cause. Over a hundred people total on both planes. Hubby has NBC on in the LR, just gave a brief report with no details.

[nostamj]

3. well, less than the odds of FOUR....

:eyesroll:

[TheRovingGourmet]

8. I guess I should say what are the odds on two accidentally

crashing at the same time. :)

[wicket]

4. 2 at the same time?!

Something smells fishy...

[hang a left]

5. More....

It is not yet known whether there were casualities in either incident.

Emergency officials were quoted by the Itar-Tass agency as saying they had reached the site of the first crash in the Tula region, but there was no news on what they found.

The plane had disappeared off radar screens on its way to the southern city of Volgograd late on Tuesday.

The second plane, said to be a Tu-154 flying from Moscow to the Black Sea resort of Sochi, vanished when it was expected to be 140 km (90 miles) from the southern city of Rostov-on-Don, the emergencies ministry said, according to the Interfax news agency.

from your bbc link.

[swag]

6. wow, that must be one bad pilot,

er, oops, scusa me.

[sniffa]

20. can someone photo shop putin's head

onto w's

[standardClass]

33. No excuse

There are two planes down and more than 100 dead. Not funny.

[Moderator]

7. Change your subject header

You need to change your subject line to one of the two in the link provided. Neither story has the headline you posted.

[muriel_volestrangler]

10. headline updated

to reflect the updated headline on BBC (correct at present!)

[Dead_Parrot]

11. To be fair...

Not on BBC's site site yet, but BBC TV now reporting "Two plane crashes in Russia". Close enough, methinks.

[hang a left]

9. Here is some information I found on Sochi.

I wonder who was on those planes?

Welcome to Sochi (sew chee')An absolutely unique subtropical city on the Black Sea, Sochi is considered the "Russian Riviera". Sochi has an exciting history. Sochi is the center of cultural life in Russia. This city is also the official vacation hideaway of the Russian president and government. Sochi is the jewel of southern Russia, a paradise.




A warm ocean is just minutes away from glacier topped mountains. Warm tropical breezes create a delightful year-round climate, though it is temperate enough to have seasons. No one can ever forget their visit to Sochi!
Spectacular Scenery awaits you seaside and in the towering mountains that help make Sochi the longest city in the world! Sochi, also spelled Soci, is a city and resort area of the Krasnodar Kray (region). The city stretches along the Black Sea coast at the foot of the western part of the main Caucasus mountain range. It was established in 1896 on the site of the former Navaginskoye fort and began to be recognized as a resort area in 1902.


http://arussianromance.com/sochi.htm

[Bluebear]

12. Sochi saw a controversial plane crash in October 2001

Just for interest's sake, although Sochi was the destination this time, not the origination city.


SOCHI, Oct 8,2001: Distraught families of the victims of the Black Sea plane crash accused the Russian authorities on Monday of trying to cover up the causes of a mid-air explosion that has been linked to a misfired Ukrainian missile.

Around 100 relatives of the Israeli victims gathered in a hotel in the Black Sea resort of Sochi to be briefed on the possible causes and legal consequences of Thursday's tragedy.

Russia initially blamed a terrorist attack for the blast on the Sibir Tupolev airliner around 180 kilometres south of Sochi which cost the lives of at least 76 people. But Ukraine sent a top-level delegation to Sochi Monday after persistent reports that an S-200 ground-to-air missile could have accidentally shot down the plane during military exercises in the Crimean peninsula.

Ukraine's President Leonid Kuchma refused to rule out the possibility that a Ukrainian missile was responsible for the tragedy. "It is technically impossible" that a missile hit the plane, but "everything is possible theoretically," Kuchma told journalists in Kiev.

http://www.dawn.com/2001/10/09/int12.htm

[hang a left]

13. Wasn't this the crash that had the Israeli microbiologists on it?

n/t

edit for micro

[DoYouEverWonder]

14. Both planes left from the same airport

n/t

[TheRovingGourmet]

17. I'm betting the baggage handlers at that airport are in an

interrogation room right now.

[benburch]

15. I can think of one common mode fault that would do it.

Bad fuel. If they were fueled by the same tanker, and if that tanker had contaminated fuel, eventually the fuel lines would clog up...

[TheRovingGourmet]

18. The news reports make it sound like both crashes

happened at the same time so it sounds like bombs. I guess someone could have improperly closed the cargo doors on both planes but even then the odds are against them crashing at the same time.

[politicat]

48. actually, bad fuel would be a reasonable bet here...

there's about 4-7 minutes worth of fuel in the fuel line between tank and engine on most of the Aeroflot fleet.

Say they got fueled from the wrong tanker - say, 106 Octane gas for light planes rather than the kerosene/diesel jet fuel.

They make it up, and then....

Pcat

More information is however, needed.

[Sufi Marmot]

52. I'm not sure they could have gotten that far

Rostov on the Don (Rostov) is ~750 miles from Moscow by my estimation).

map here

That's way too far to fly on <10 minutes worth of "good" fuel, right?

-SM

[Jacobin]

19. Or, Chechen rebels

That's my bet

[DoYouEverWonder]

22. BushCo distraction

more likely.

Kerry's supposed to be on Jon Stewart tonight.

[standardClass]

35. What sour hell is this?

The US caused the crash or two planes killing 100+ people because a candidate for president is going to be on a comedy show?

I wonder allright...if out party is going to spread this kind of nonsense we are doomed.

[DoYouEverWonder]

42. Sorry had my tinfoil hat on a bit tight tonight

According to someone in the know over in GD, Kerry was supposed to make a big announcement between 6:30 and 7:00 PM.

It's been postponed until the morning.

[goforit]

47. 18 posts????...............try again.

Never heard about the the old trusty Microwwave weaponry
lingering around hiding in this administration's closets????

Hmmmmmm.........

See no evil, hear no evil and speak no evil????

[Ediacara]

21. That's possible

Any word on when the planes took off? The BBC site has nothing but the time when the planes were lost on radar.

If the planes took off hours apart (or even a half hour apart) and crashed within 4 minutes of eachother, I would discount the possibility of bad fuel. However, if they took off within minutes of eachother, then this seems at least as likely, if not more likely than terrorism.

[Sufi Marmot]

16. In the absence of any information...

...my first guess would be Chechen separatists. They've been bombing Russian trains for years, perhaps they've upgraded to airplanes. Complete speculation on my part, though...


-SM

[Aidoneus]

29. I doubt that

mass murder just isn't their style (that's what is used against them, after all, to the tune of hundreds of thousands without so much as a batted eye from the so-called international community), especially without any 'way out' to it (the 'way out' being the real point, and not the conclusion of the act itself which is incidentally never followed through--on their end, anyway.. the end result has sometimes been the same, though not by their hands).

Shamil took a plane once, but nothing came of it.

As demonstrated by the Ingush operation, the position of the muqawama now is one of strength.. this wouldn't make sense.

[Sufi Marmot]

32. Actually, it is their style...

Link #1
Link #2

-SM

[Xithras]

34. Not their style?

It's important to understand that the Chechen separatists and the Chechen terrorists are not the same people, and their actions have to be painted with different brushes. The Chechen separatists are a regular Army trying to win independence for their nation, and have never been accused of any crime more severe than shooting at Russian civilians in the war zone.

The Chechen terrorist group(s), on the other hand, are trained by Al Queda (an affiliation admitted to by both groups) and primarily consist of religious zealots who want Chechen independence so they can set Chechnya up as a religious theocracy (something most mainstream Chechen separatists aren't interested in). The Chechen terrorist group(s) consist primarily of religious zealots not interested in fighting the Russians on Chechnya's soil, funded and trained primarily by the Saudi Wahabbiists. Their goal isn't so much a Chechnya's victory as an Islamic victory, and they don't really represent anyones interests but their own.

These terrorists have no qualms with killing Russian civilians, and have set off bombs in Russia in the past specifically targeting the civilian population. Their goal is classic terrorism...to scare the Russian population into acquiescing to their demands so that they can take over Chechnya themselves. Of course, if the Russians ever did that, Chechnya itself would probably dissolve into civil war as the various factions fought for control over the country (the last time Chechnya was independent it became a criminal haven under the control of a corrupt crime boss, and the Muslim extremists were marginalized...if they get the chance again, it's unlikely that the extremists will go so quietly).

[Nambe]

23. Witnesses saw an explosion on board the plane just before it crashed

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=574&ncid=732&e=2&u=/nm/20040824/wl_nm/crash_russia_dc

[hang a left]

25. UPDATE

According to this article I jacked off of the GD thread on this subject; witnesses saw an explosion aboard the plane before it crashed.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=574&ncid=732&e=2&u=/nm/20040824/wl_nm/crash_russia_dc

[Sufi Marmot]

26. Any reports as to which airline?

Russia now has multiple private domestic passenger airlines. It would be useful to know whether both planes were the same carrier or not.

-SM

[hang a left]

27. No.

Just the airport and the plane type.

[Krupskaya]

46. Different airlines...

...Sibir and Aviaexpress.

[politicat]

49. The crashed one is Volga-Aviaexpress. The missing one is Sibir.

I'm reading Tass and Pravda right now (slowly, my modern russian is conversational) for more information. I don't trust the translations they offer.

Pcat

[Gman]

28. Chechen SAM's

[Sufi Marmot]

31. I'm thinking bombs in the luggage hold with timing devices...

...which would explain why the planes went down at nearly the same time. Tula and Rostov on the Don are hundreds of miles apart - to me it would seem unlikely that SAM attacks could be coordinated to happen at the same time in two places so far from each other. Only by chance would SAM-wielding terrorists happen to have viable targets in the sky at the same time so many miles apart. :shrug:

-SM

[Gwerlain]

36. ...and skulduggery among the luggage handlers.

The planes both took off from the same airport. :nuke:

[Gman]

38. Yup, that makes more sense

now that you mention those cities are that far apart. But I still think Chechen rebels did it.

[Xithras]

30. This is pretty obviously terrorism

Two aircraft take off from the same airport within an hour of each other, fly 600 miles apart from each other, and are both dropped out of the sky within four minutes of each other by onboard explosions?

I'd bet real money that one of the AQ trained Chechen terrorist cells is behind this. I'd also bet real money that the Russian response is going to be swift and brutal. The Russians in Chechnya have shown a real penchant for kicking out the press and engaging in "eye for an eye" tactics whenever it suits them.

[bushisanidiot]

37. Wait. I Thought Pres. AWOL Singlehandedly made the world a safer place

so what's this shit??

The "war" on terrorism is obviously a miserable failure.

[AlFrankenFan]

39. I saw that when I came home today on the CNN 24/7 ticker

I freaked, those tickers being for a lack of proper describing words, thinking someone attacked the US. But that's horrible. I have to wonder if any terrorists had anything to do with it.

[mconvente]

40. most likely

Planes disappearing within minutes of each other. Sounds like terrorism to me. Most likely Chechen rebels (as stated before). I guess Bush's war on terror is working...

[Momma Mia]

43. Russian plane crashes ...

Standard Class ...

I agree with you, is positively absurd ... "The US caused the crash or two planes killing 100+ people because a candidate for president is going to be on a comedy show?"

It has to be, in my opinion, the Chechen terrorists that are aligned with the Al Queda folks.

No matter who is to blame ... Is not good news to the families of the folks who died!

[nodehopper]

41. bomb explodes at Moscow bus station

something really bad is going on in Moscow
http://www.heraldsun.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5478,10561709%255E1702,00.html

I am very very concerned.

[Radius]

44. Chechen's?

The odds of all this happening without human intervention is very low.

As everyone knows the Russians have a 10 year old war with Muslim separatists in Chechnya.

Maybe I'm wrong, but the odds are pretty low...

[dave29]

45. Looks like Russia is under attack

2 planes down and a bomb in Moscow...

[Tight_rope]

50. This is sad...the world is going "MAD"!

[politicat]

51. and amazingly it's near impossible to find info on it...

And CNN is of course shilling for chimpy.

Pcat

[54anickel]

53. Putin orders investigation among fears that terrorism involved

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/world/20040824-1953-russia-planecrash.html

snip>

President Vladimir Putin ordered an investigation by the nation's top intelligence agency, and security was tightened at airports across the country.

Authorities have expressed concern that separatist rebels in the southern republic of Chechnya could carry out attacks linked to this Sunday's presidential election there. Rebels have been blamed for a series of terror strikes that have claimed hundreds of lives.

Chechnya's previous president, the pro-Russian Akhmad Kadyrov, was killed by a bombing in May.

Witnesses reported seeing an explosion before the first plane crashed about 125 miles south of Moscow, and authorities were not ruling out terrorism, the agency said.

The Interfax news agency said emergency workers spotted a fire about 600 miles south of Moscow in the region where the second plane went missing.

more...

[politicat]

54. Plane sent Hijack signal

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/russia_plane_crash

oh, hell.

Pcat

[hang a left]

56. Don't you think that this is weird?

from your link.

"No restrictions were placed on flights at Domodedovo, Interfax reported."

In the US we shut down airports frequently when there are security concerns. Here you have 2 planes, possibly both hijacked with bombs on board and they are not suspicious of other flights.


:tinfoilhat:

[hang a left]

57. I found this. I hate the way we get the news.

RE: Breaking News: Plane With 62 Crashed Nr Moscow
Username: Horus
From Egypt, joined Feb 2004, 3090 posts, RR: 56
Reply: 41
Posted Wed Aug 25 2004 00:16:29 UTC+1 and read 10856 times:
Portcolumbus, according to the BBC they have closed ALL Moscow airports.

Horus









http://www.airliners.net/discussions/general_aviation/read.main/1712541/

[nodehopper]

55. Lenta.ru just said second plane not found, the presumed crash site's notit

They said there was a lot of mist in the area, and where they thought the second plane crashed and where teams were dispatched there was no remnants of a plane. They don't know where it is.