'We were so scared': Passengers' 21 minutes of horror before plane exploded
A flight radar has revealed the Russian aircraft which landed in a fireball in Moscow on Sunday had issues not long after takeoff.
Data from Flightradar24 shows Sukhoi SSJ100, operated by Russian flagship carrier Aeroflot, departed from Moscow for Murmansk in Russia’s northwest about 6.03pm local time.
But six minutes after takeoff the plane’s squawk code changed to 7600, which indicated a radio communications failure.
A map of its flightpath showed the aircraft circled Moscow twice.
At 6.26pm Flightrader24 said it changed its call to a 7700 to indicate a general emergency. This was just four minutes before the aircraft began to land and erupted into flames.
Forty-one people on board died and 37 survived.
In a statement, Sheremetyevo Airport said the plane did turn back but would not specify on why citing “unspecified technical reasons”.
Passenger Pyotr Egorov claims lightning struck the plane.
"The plane turned back and there was a hard landing,” he told the Komsomolskaya Pravda Daily.
“We were so scared, we almost lost consciousness. The plane jumped down the landing strip like a grasshopper and then caught fire on the ground.”
Russian newsagency Interfax cited a source as saying the plane had only succeeded making an emergency landing on the second attempt and that some of the aircraft's systems had then failed.
The emergency landing was so hard that debris had found its way into the engines, sparking a fire that swiftly engulfed the rear of the fuselage, the same source said.
Authorities said the plane’s evacuation was delayed by passengers retrieving luggage on board.
With Reuters
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