Russian airliners crash simultaneously

[Jonathan]

BBC: Double air disaster hits Russia

Wreckage from the plane crashes were strewn over wide areas
Two Russian airliners carrying around 40 passengers each crashed within minutes of each other after flying out of the same Moscow airport.
One of the planes is reported to have sent out a distress signal before it vanished from the radar.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has ordered the state security services, the FSB, to launch an investigation.

Russia's UN ambassador said they would be investigating whether terrorism was the cause of the crashes.

Both the planes flew out of Moscow's Domodedovo airport within 40 minutes of each other on Tuesday evening.

They got into trouble almost simultaneously at about 2300 local time (1900GMT).

Wreckage from the first plane, a Tu-134 bound for Volgograd, was found near the village of Buchalki, in the Tula region, about 200km (125 miles) from Moscow.

An official later said everyone on board had been killed.

The small Volga-Aviaexpress airline, which owned the plane, said all necessary security checks had been completed, and it was being piloted by the firm's director, Yury Baichkin.

There were reports from eyewitnesses that the aircraft exploded in the air before it crashed.

Air traffic controllers reportedly said no distress signals were received from the crew before the crash.

The second plane, a Tu-154 heading for the Black Sea resort of Sochi, disappeared from the radar at around the same time.

Russia's Interfax news agency quoted a source as saying the plane sent out a hijack alert shortly before it vanished.

Later, it quoted an unnamed law enforcement source as saying the signal had been a distress alert.

Bad weather hampered the search for wreckage, which was found about nine hours after the plane's disappearance in the Rostov region, some 1,000 km (600 miles) south of Moscow.

A flight recorder was found in the wreckage near the southern Russian town of Rostov-on-Don.

Russian air company Sibir said it owned the plane.

"The fact that both planes took off from one airport and disappeared from radars around the same time can show it was a planned action," said one aviation source quoted by Interfax.

President Putin, currently on holiday in Sochi, ordered an FSB investigation into the crashes.

Russian carrier Sibir says it owned one of the missing aircraft
FSB investigations are normally held only when an accident occurs in suspicious circumstances, a security source told Reuters news agency.

Security has been tightened at Russian airports and the authorities say they are not ruling out a terrorist attack as a cause for the crash.

When told of the two crashes, Russia's UN ambassador, Andrey Denisov, said: "Now we have to see if there's terrorism," reported the Associated Press news agency.

There are fears the two aircraft may have fallen victim to an attack by militants linked to a bloody uprising in the southern republic of Chechnya, which is due to elect a new president in a few days' time.

Chechnyan separatists have been suspected of many terrorist attacks last year. If they are responsible for the plane crashes, it must be one of their most deadly attacks.