Russian Plane Explodes above the Black Sea

Thursday, Oct. 4, 2001
Ukrainian Defense Minister Alexander Kuzmuk was happy with the exercises his air defense forces were having at the Chauda missile shooting ground in the Crimea. Or so he told the Interfax wire agency. But his pleasure might be marred by suspicions that an Ukrainian air defense missile could have shot down a Russian plane en route to Novosibirsk from Tel-Aviv.

The Tupolev 154 with 76 people aboard, including twelve crew, exploded at an altitude of 9,000 meters above the Black Sea, 185 km southeast of the coastal Russian resort city of Sochi. An Armenian Airlines plane was flying in the vicinity at the time, and the crew of that craft reported an explosion aboard the Tupolev, after which the plane went into a spin and crashed into the sea. The Russians sent several vessels to the area, but no survivors were found. So far, Russian sailors have recovered four bodies and the debris left from the crashed plane. Russian President Vladimir Putin said that terrorism could be the cause of the catastrophe.

Russian television channels quoted CBS as saying that terrorists could have shot a missile from the Crimea. There have been previous reports in the Russian and Ukrainian media that the Crimean Tatars were giving shelter to Chechen rebels, and that some Tatar radicals volunteered to fight in Chechnya. Another possibility is that the Tupolev was accidentally shot by a surface-to-air missile during the Ukrainian air defense exercises. Asked by the Russian media to comment on that, the Kremlin press-service answered: "It is up to the Ukrainian official authorities to answer this question."

Initially, it was said that the plane made a stopover in Burgas, Bulgaria. However, this was promptly denied. The Siberian airline that owns the plane confirmed that the flight had originated from Ben Gurion Tel-Aviv airport and was flying non-stop. It was also confirmed that the Israeli security services carried out a full check on the plane and the passengers. However, the plane carried 64 passengers while only 51 tickets had been sold, according to Konstantin Tochilin, Russian TV-6 channel's correspondent in Israel. This discrepancy has yet to be explained.

Tupolevs have a poor safety record: 28 of the 923 planes produced since 1968 have crashed. But Alexander Neradko, Chief of Russian State Civil Aviation Service, rules out any technical malfunction, saying no civil aviation plane has ever crashed like this. In all previous cases, the crew was able to inform air controllers of trouble aboard.