Russian airliner crash kills 170

SUKHA BALKA, Ukraine - A Russian airliner carrying 170 holidaymakers home from a seaside resort crashed and burst into flames in a field in Ukraine overnight after it was struck by lightning, officials said.

The Russian emergencies ministry said there were no survivors.

Vasily Nalyotenko, deputy head of Pulkovo Airlines, which operated the Soviet-designed Tu-154, said the dead included 10 crew and 39 children. Dutch nationals were among the dead.

A ministry spokeswoman said: "According to initial information there was a lightning strike on the plane."

Rescue teams trained hoses on tiny pieces of smouldering wreckage strewn across a gully and woodland outside the eastern Ukrainian village of Sukha Balka.

A burnt-out engine lay in a field and chunks of fuselage sporting Pulkovo's livery jutted out of a clearing.

Airline officials said the crew had tried desperately to steer the plane to safety from a high altitude.

"An SOS was issued from 11,700 metres and then again at 3,000 metres," Anatoly Samoshin, another deputy chairman of the airline, told reporters.

"There was an incomprehensible sentence. We didn't understand what was said. At 3,000 metres, communication ceased."

Rescue teams were at the scene within 10 minutes of the impact. Helicopters whirred overhead despite stormy weather which abated as more crews arrived.

"The plane was in the air and all of a sudden there was a flash of lightning," a man in his twenties told Russia's NTV television. "Then I saw the plane veering sharply downwards before it fell in a field over there."

Officials had earlier blamed the crash on severe turbulence.

Flight 612 took off from the Black Sea resort of Anapa and was bound for its home base of St Petersburg. Its route went across Ukraine's eastern tip.

In St Petersburg, officials brought in several dozen psychologists to help about 60 relatives who had come to the airport to await the aircraft's arrival. Pulkovo was due to fly relatives to the crash site on Wednesday.

David Learmount, Operations and Safety Editor with Flight International magazine in the UK, said a lightning strike could have damaged the plane's instruments.

"The Tu-154 is a pretty damned robust plane," he said. "It would take an awful lot to damage it so it would not survive."

The Tu-154, dating from Soviet times, is the workhorse of most airlines in ex-Soviet states. Post-Soviet airlines had a patchy safety record in the aftermath of the collapse of communism, but it has improved in recent years.

However, the crash was the second involving a regional Russian airline this year.

Last month, an Airbus A-310 belonging to Sibir airlines crashed and burst into flames after veering off the runway on landing in the Siberian city of Irkutsk, killing 122 people.

In May, 113 people died when an Airbus A-320 belonging to Armenian airline Armavia crashed on its way from Yerevan to the Russian resort of Sochi.

- REUTERS