Eight crew members injured as cargo plane crash-lands
Eight crew members of a Russian cargo airliner were injured when the aircraft crash-landed near Moscow's Domodedovo international airport early today.
Eight crew members of a Russian cargo airliner were injured when the aircraft crash-landed near Moscow's Domodedovo international airport early today.
Eight crew members were onboard the Tupolev Tu-204 aircraft en route from the Egyptian resort of Hurghada, when it apparently made a belly landing, Russian state TV reported.
Rescue teams have evacuated the entire crew. TV footage showed the plane's broken fuselage lying in the snow amid trees about 1.5 kilometres from the airport. There was no sign of fire, apparently because the plane had little fuel left when it went down.
The plane belonging to charter airlines 'Aviastar Tu' was on a technical flight from the Egyptian resort without any passengers when it went off radars approximately one kilometre from the runway.
Limited visibility was said to be the cause of the accident.
The Tu-204 is a twin-engine medium-range airliner designed in the 1980s in the Soviet Union to compete with Boeings and Airbuses. The post-Soviet economic meltdown derailed plans for its large-scale production, and only about 60 such planes have been built since 1990.