Russian investigators looking into the crash of a military plane that crashed, killing all 92 on board, believe a fault with its wing flaps was the reason it plunged into the Black Sea, an investigative source has told the Russian Interfax news agency.
The plane, a Tupolev-154 belonging to the defence ministry, disappeared from radar screens two minutes after taking off on Sunday from Sochi in southern
Russia, killing dozens of Red Army Choir singers and dancers en route to Syria to entertain Russian troops in the run-up to the New Year.
The defence ministry said 15 bodies and 239 body fragments have been recovered from the crash site. It previously said 17 bodies had been found.
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A massive recovery effort has involved 3,600 people, including about 200 navy divers flown to the site from all over Russia. They have been aided by drones and submersibles.
Search teams on Wednesday recovered a second flight recorder from the plane. The first flight recorder was found on Tuesday and experts have started analysing its data to determine the cause of the crash.
The Life.ru news portal, which has close contacts to law enforcement agencies, said it had obtained a readout of one of the pilot’s last words, indicating a problem with the wing flaps: “Commander, we are going down,” the pilot was reported to have said.
There was no official confirmation of the readout. The Interfax news agency separately cited an unnamed investigative source as saying preliminary data showed the wing flaps had failed and not worked in tandem. As a result, the ageing Soviet-era plane had not been able to gather enough speed and had dropped into the sea, breaking up on impact. If confirmed, the technical failure will raise questions about the future of the Tu-154, which is still actively used by Russian government ministries but not by major Russian commercial airlines.
‘No indications of terror attack’
Russia’s main domestic security and counter-terrorism agency, the FSB, said it found “no indications or facts pointing at the possibility of a terror attack or an act of sabotage” on the plane.
However, some aviation experts have noted that the crew’s failure to report any technical problem and the large area over which fragments of the plane were scattered could point to a possible explosion on board.
The Tu-154 is a Soviet-built three-engine airliner designed in the late 1960s. Russian airlines decommissioned the noisy, fuel-guzzling aircraft years ago, but the military and other government agencies continue using the plane, which is still loved by crews for its maneuverability and sturdiness.
The aircraft which crashed on Sunday was built in 1983 and underwent factory checks and maintenance in 2014 as well as earlier this year. Investigators have taken relevant documents from the plant that did the job.
Agencies