Russian emergency workers have recovered 41 bodies and two flight recorders from the wreckage of a plane that caught fire during an emergency landing in Moscow, officials said Monday as they sought to discover the cause of the disaster.
Transport Minister Yevgeny Dietrich gave the death toll andsaid six of the survivors had been hospitalised. The plane, an Aeroflot SSJ100,was carrying 78 people, including five crew members.
The plane caught fire Sunday evening about 6:30 p.M. As itcame down hard on the runway at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport after turningback from a flight destined for Murmansk. The landing occurred about a halfhour after takeoff, indicating that the plane had little time to dump its fuel.
Videos showed desperate passengers hurrying down emergencyslides deployed from the plane’s forward section as black smoke billowed.
One of the dead was flight attendant Maxim Moiseev, Dietrichsaid.
Russian news reports, citing unnamed sources, said theMoiseev was in the back part of the plane, which was engulfed in flames andtried unsuccessfully to deploy an evacuation slide.Russia’s main investigative body said both ofthe plane’s flight recorders — data and voice — have been recovered.