Europe News

Russian plane with ice hockey team crashes, 43 dead

Sep 7, 2011, 15:31 GMT

People pay tribute to the victims of a plane crash of Lokomotiv Yaroslavl team, Prague\'s Old Town Square, Czech Republic 07 Septmeber 2011. EPA/FILIP SINGER

Moscow - A passenger plane with an ice hockey team aboard crashed in central Russia on Wednesday, leaving 43 dead and two survivors in critical condition, the Interfax news agency reported.

Officials at Russia's state aviation agency Rosaviatsia said the plane, with 37 passengers and a crew of eight, crashed after taking off from an airport near the central Russian city of Yaroslavl, some 250 kilometres north-east of Moscow.

By the officials' accounts, the plane suddenly veered to the left and then struck the ground some 500 metres from the airport.

An eyewitness told Interfax the plane ran off the end of the airport runway, then lifted less than two meters into the air before striking a fence with its landing gear and hitting a navigation antenna.

The aircraft then burst into flames and broke in half. One part slid into a gully, while other debris including much of the plane's passenger section flew into the nearby Volga River, he said.

A team of investigators was quickly on the scene. Searchers had recovered a reported three dozen corpses from the plane's wreckage by 6 pm (1500 GMT). Twenty-six were removed from the water.

Early evaluation of the crash site seemed to indicate either a technical failure in the plane, or pilot error, the news agency RIA Novosti said, citing investigators on the scene.

The Yak was operated by a local air charter company and the plane was certified as safe to fly. Its certification was scheduled to run out by late September, according to news reports.

Members of the Russian First Division hockey team Lokomotiv Yaroslavl had chartered the flight, with team players and staff accounting for 36 of the dead.

Aleksandr Galimov, 26, a forward for the team, was one of two survivors of the crash. He was in a Yaroslavl hospital and doctors were fighting to save his life, Galomov's wife Marina told Interfax.

He suffered 80 per cent burns over his body and would need to undergo 'several' operations in order to have a chance of living, she said.

Team victims reportedly included players from Sweden, Poland, Ukraine, the Czech Republic, Germany, Belarus and Latvia.

Lokomotiv had been en route to the Belarusian capital Minsk for a league match scheduled for Thursday.

The other survivor was a crew member, flight engineer Aleksandr Sizov, who was being treated for severe burns and multiple broken bones, the newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda reported.

Viktor Berezin, a spokesman for the Yarslavl regional hospital, said both survivors were in 'extremely critical' condition.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev was planning to visit the crash site on Thursday, according to a Kremlin statement.