UTAir Tupolev TU-134A-3 plane crash
Samara, Russia
Updated on
The Tu-134 passenger jet owned by Russian airline UTAir, carrying 50 passengers and seven crewmembers, was commuting from
the Siberian city of Surgut to the western city of Belgorod with a stop in Samara, a city on the Volga River, about 885
kilometres southeast of Moscow.
Weather conditions were very poor at Samara as the twin-engine plane approached the airport: horizontal visibility was 150
meters and vertical visibility was 300 feet. Heavy and freezing fog had surrounded the area. The
airplane contacted the ground 400 m short of the runway. The left wing hit the ground and separated from the fuselage. Then
the plane rolled on its back and the fuselage broke apart. 6 passengers died, 20 occupants were injured and 31 escaped
without injury.
Prosecutors investigating the crash in the central Russian city of Samara said bad weather and pilot error were the most
likely causes.
After the crash, the plane's wrecked fuselage lay on thick snow yards from the landing strip. It took several minutes to
the rescuers to reach the crash scene. The plane’s wings, tail and engine were scattered about as rescuers worked to
evacuate surviving victims and bodies of the dead and police searched for clues.
