Yahoo Finance Russia keeps Sukhoi planes flying after crash despite fears equipment failed
Russia will not ground its Sukhoi Superjet 100 planes, despite fears equipment failure may have caused one to crash and catch fire on Sunday.
The Russian emergency ministry said the Sukhoi aircraft will continue to fly and talk of grounding is premature, according to Reuters.
A reported 41 people died when a jet crash landed in Moscow, with the plane bursting into flames.
At least 33 passengers are believed to have escaped alive from the wreckage after the Aeroflot flight SU 1492 hit the runway at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo.
The cause of the disaster has not yet been officially announced, with a probe now underway by the Russian aviation watchdog.
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Russian investigators are now exploring if an equipment failure, inexperienced pilots or bad weather caused the plane to catch fire, according to Associated Press.
Russian news sources are reporting that the plane involved was made only in 2017, and had been serviced earlier this year.
The Aeroflot airline once had a “troubled post-Soviet safety record,” according to Reuters, but has shaken it off and now has one of the world’s “most modern fleets” of Boeing and Airbus planes on global routes.
The Sukhoi Superjet has also suffered from “sporadic concerns over safety and reliability,” and was grounded in 2016 after a defect was found in one plane’s tail.
One Superjet crashed in 2012 in Indonesia, with 45 killed but human error blamed for the tragedy.
It is used on domestic flights, and Russian officials are said to be keen for Aeroflot to buy more of the planes.
Several passengers had told media outlets the plane had struggled in difficult weather conditions. The plane was evacuated via emergency slides after the hard landing, which saw the aircraft bouncing along the runway.
Pyotr Egorov, a passenger, told the Russian paper Komsomolskaya Pravda: "We took off and then lightning struck the plane.
"The plane turned back and there was a hard landing. We were so scared, we almost lost consciousness. The plane jumped down the landing strip like a grasshopper and then caught fire on the ground."
