Pilot says lightning caused deadly Russian crash landing

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Members of emergency services and investigators work at the scene of an incident involving an Aeroflot Sukhoi Superjet 100 passenger plane at Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport, Russia May 6, 2019. (Reuters)
Updated 06 May 2019
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Pilot says lightning caused deadly Russian crash landing

  • The plane that burst into flames was without radio communications because of a lightning strike
  • The Sukhoi SSJ100 reportedly did not jettison any fuel before landing, as is common procedure to reduce the weight of an aircraft that must land shortly after takeoff

MOSCOW: The pilot of a Russian passenger plane that erupted in a ball of fire on the runway of Moscow’s busiest airport, killing 41 people, said lightning led to the emergency landing.
Investigators were on Monday working to understand the causes of the blaze after the Sukhoi Superjet-100 had to return to Sheremetyevo airport shortly after take-off Sunday evening.
Pilot Denis Yevdokimov told Russian media the aircraft lost communication and needed to switch to emergency control mode “because of lightning” on the Aeroflot flight to the Arctic city of Murmansk.
He did not specify if the plane was struck directly.
“We managed to restore communication through the emergency frequency on our radio connection. But the link was only for a short time and kept cutting out... it was possible to say only a few words,” he told the Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper.
Videos on social media showed the plane crash-landing and then speeding along the runway with flames pouring from its fuselage.
People could be seen leaping onto an inflatable slide at the front and running from the blazing plane as columns of black smoke billowed into the sky.

Another video shot inside the cabin showed roaring flames outside the window and passengers crying out in panic.
Yevdokimov said he believed the plane burst into flames on landing, most likely because of full fuel tanks.
Aside from the dead, nine people were in hospital, three of them seriously injured, authorities said.
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said an American citizen had died as he expressed “sincere condolences” to the families of the victims.
Russian President Vladimir Putin offered his condolences to the victims’ loved ones and said the investigation into the disaster “should be as thorough as possible.”
The jet — carrying 73 passengers and five crew members — took off from Sheremetyevo at 6:02pm (1502 GMT) and the crew issued a distress signal shortly afterwards, officials said.
Flight tracking site Flightradar24 showed the plane circling near the capital before landing.
Transport Minister Yevgeny Dietrich said there were no plans to ground the Superjet-100 model.
The charred aircraft surrounded by vehicles and a crane could still be seen from the terminal on Monday afternoon.
The Russian Investigative Committee later said the fragments were moved into a hangar and black boxes handed to experts.
Flight schedules at the airport were disrupted by the accident due to one of the two runways being closed.
Several people on board said they witnessed the lightning strike.

Passenger Pyotr Yegorov told media: “We had just taken off when the plane was hit by lightning... the landing was very hard, we almost passed out from fear.
“The plane bounced on the tarmac like a grasshopper and burst into flames on the ground.”
“We had taken off, we were in a cloud, there was heavy hail,” flight attendant Tatyana Kasatkina told the Rossiya 24 news channel.
“Then it was like a slap, a flash, like electricity. It all happened very fast.”
Vladimir Yevmenkov, another passenger, told TV news he saw lightning striking the right engine of the plane twice from his seat after take off.
“There were two very loud bangs and two flashes, but the engine did not catch fire.
Aviation expert and former construction engineer at Sukhoi, Vadim Lukashevich, said a lightning strike is “does not lead to any catastrophic consequences” for modern planes.
The plane ignited when “the chassis pierced the fuel tank” during a hard blow against the runway, causing a “heavy leak,” he told AFP.
Russia’s national carrier Aeroflot was once notorious for a poor safety record but in recent years its image has improved and it has not had a fatal accident in more than a decade.
The Russian Sukhoi Superjet-100 however has been dogged with problems since its launch in 2011.
In 2012, a Superjet performing at an Indonesian air show slammed into a volcano, killing all 45 people on board. Indonesia blamed the crash on pilot error.
Technical problems with the plane have been reported in recent years and Russia has struggled to convince foreign carriers to purchase it.
The government offered subsidies to encourage Russian airlines to buy the Superjet and Aeroflot has became its main operator.
In 2018, it announced a record order of 100 Superjet-100s.
Russian regional airline Yamal said Monday it had canceled an order for 10 of the jets but said this was to do with servicing costs rather than the crash.
The Murmansk region — where many of those killed or injured are believed to be from — went into a three-day period of mourning from Monday.


Bus crash blaze kills 38 in Tanzania

Updated 18 sec ago
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Bus crash blaze kills 38 in Tanzania

DAR ES SALAAM: A collision between a bus and minibus in Tanzania has killed 38 people after both vehicles were set on fire by the crash, the presidency said Sunday.
The accident in Sabasaba, in the Kilimanjaro region, on Saturday evening occurred after one of the bus’s tires punctured, causing the driver to lose control.
“A total of 38 people died in the crash, including two women,” a presidency statement said, adding that 28 others were wounded.
“However, due to the extent of the burns, 36 bodies remain unidentified,” the presidency said.
Six of the injured were still in hospital for treatment, it added.
Deadly crashes are frequent on Tanzania’s roads.
In a 2018 report, the World Health Organization estimated that 13,000 to 19,000 people in Tanzania were killed in traffic accidents in 2016, far higher than the government’s official toll of 3,256.

EU must be more assertive with Israel: Ex-foreign policy chief

The EU must adopt a more assertive posture against Israel over its violations of international law in Gaza, Josep Borrell, said.
Updated 10 min 54 sec ago
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EU must be more assertive with Israel: Ex-foreign policy chief

  • Josep Borrell: Europe has been ‘relegated to the sidelines’ in mediating conflict
  • Country ‘carrying out the largest ethnic-cleansing operation since end of Second World War’

LONDON: The EU must adopt a more assertive posture against Israel over its violations of international law in Gaza, Josep Borrell, the bloc’s former foreign policy chief, has said.

In an article for Foreign Affairs magazine, Borrell argued that the EU has a “duty” to intervene over the humanitarian catastrophe in the Palestinian enclave, The Guardian reported.

Rather than relying on the US to bring an end to the war, Europe must launch its own plan, he said.

The article was co-authored with Kalypso Nicolaidis, a Franco-Greek academic who has advised the EU.

“Europe can no longer afford to linger at the margin. The EU needs a concerted plan,” the two authors said.

“Not only is Europe’s own security at stake, but more important, European history imposes a duty on Europeans to intervene in response to Israel’s violations of international law.

“Europeans cannot stay the hapless fools in this tragic story, dishing out cash with their eyes closed.”

Borrell’s successor, Kaja Kallas, said last week that it was “very clear” Israel had breached its human rights commitments during its war on Gaza.

However, the “concrete question” remains the choice of action EU member states can agree on in response, she added.

Last month, 17 EU member states, in protest against Israel’s blockade of humanitarian aid to Gaza, triggered a review of the bloc’s association agreement with Israel, which covers trade and other cooperation.

Borrell last month accused Tel Aviv of “carrying out the largest ethnic-cleansing operation since the end of the Second World War.”

Europe’s inconsistent response to the humanitarian crisis can be partly explained by the reluctance of some countries — including Germany, Hungary and Austria — to take action against Israel for historical reasons, Borrell and Nicolaidis wrote.

Yet there are ways for other EU member states to take action without requiring a continent-wide consensus, they said, highlighting the EU’s financial leverage and the utility of European programs for Israel, including the Erasmus student exchange scheme.

EU member states could also invoke Article 20 of the EU’s treaty to “allow for at least nine member states to come together to utilize certain foreign policy tools not related to defense,” they wrote.

“Because such an action has never been taken before, those states would have to explore what (it) … would concretely allow them to do,” the Foreign Affairs article said.

The EU has been rendered ineffective in applying pressure due to disunity, the two authors said, arguing that the bloc should act as a powerful mediator in the Middle East.

“Some EU leaders cautiously backed the International Criminal Court’s investigations, while others, such as Austria and Germany, have declined to implement its arrest warrants against Israeli officials,” they wrote.

“And because EU member states, beginning with Germany and Hungary, could not agree on whether to revisit the union’s trade policy with Israel, the EU continues to be Israel’s largest trading partner.

“As a result, the EU, as a bloc, has been largely relegated to the sidelines, divided internally and overshadowed in ceasefire diplomacy by the US and regional actors such as Egypt and Qatar. Shouldn’t the EU also have acted as a mediator?”


Ukraine on track to withdraw from Ottawa anti-personnel mines treaty, lawmaker says

Updated 33 min 48 sec ago
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Ukraine on track to withdraw from Ottawa anti-personnel mines treaty, lawmaker says

KYIV: Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky has signed a decree on the country’s withdrawal from the Ottawa Convention, which bans the production and use of anti-personnel mines, a senior Ukrainian lawmaker said on Sunday.
Ukraine ratified the convention in 2005 and a parliamentary decision is needed to withdraw from the treaty.
The document is not yet available on the website of the president’s office.
“This is a step that the reality of war has long demanded. Russia is not a party to this Convention and is massively using mines against our military and civilians,” Roman Kostenko, secretary of the Ukraine parliament’s committee on national security, defense and intelligence, said on his Facebook page.
“We cannot remain tied down in an environment where the enemy has no restrictions,” he added, saying that the legislative decision must definitively restore Ukraine’s right to effectively defend its territory.
Russia has intensified its offensive operations in Ukraine in recent months, using significant superiority in manpower.
Kostenko did not say when the issue would be debated in parliament.


Air India plane crash probe looking at all angles: minister

Updated 35 min 1 sec ago
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Air India plane crash probe looking at all angles: minister

  • All but one of the 242 people on board the Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner were killed when it crashed in the western city of Ahmedabad on June 12
  • Authorities have identified 19 others who died on the ground, but a police source said after the crash that the toll was 38

NEW DELHI: An Indian aviation minister on Sunday said investigators were probing “all angles” behind an Air India crash when asked by media about possible sabotage.

All but one of the 242 people on board the Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner were killed when it crashed in the western city of Ahmedabad on June 12.

Authorities have identified 19 others who died on the ground, but a police source told AFP after the crash that the toll was 38.

India’s minister of state for civil aviation, Murlidhar Mohol, said the investigation was looking at “all angles” when asked specifically about possible “sabotage,” in an interview with Indian news channel NDTV.

“It has never happened before that both engines have shut off together,” Mohol said earlier in the interview, in reference to theories by some experts of possible dual-engine failure.

The minister added that until the investigation report is published, it would be premature to comment on the cause.

The team appointed to investigate the crash started extracting data from the plane’s cockpit voice and flight data recorders this week, in an attempt to reconstruct the sequence of events leading to the disaster.

Air India has said that the plane was “well-maintained” and that the pilots were accomplished flyers.


Germany seeks Israeli partnership on cyberdefense, plans ‘cyber dome’

Updated 57 min 46 sec ago
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Germany seeks Israeli partnership on cyberdefense, plans ‘cyber dome’

BERLIN: Germany is aiming to establish a joint German-Israeli cyber research center and deepen collaboration between the two countries’ intelligence and security agencies, German Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt said on Sunday.
Germany is among Israel’s closest allies in Europe, and Berlin has increasingly looked to draw upon Israel’s defense expertise as it boosts its military capabilities and contributions to NATO in the face of perceived growing threats from Russia and China.
“Military defense alone is not sufficient for this turning point in security. A significant upgrade in civil defense is also essential to strengthen our overall defensive capabilities,” Dobrindt said during a visit to Israel, as reported by Germany’s Bild newspaper.
Dobrindt, who was appointed by new German Chancellor Friedrich Merz last month, arrived in Israel on Saturday.
According to the Bild report, Dobrindt outlined a five-point plan aimed at establishing what he called a “Cyber Dome” for Germany, as part of its cyberdefense strategy.
Earlier on Sunday, Bavarian Prime Minister Markus Soeder called for the acquisition of 2,000 interceptor missiles to equip Germany with an “Iron Dome” system similar to Israel’s short-range missile defense technology.