Doesn't explain what happened to the first plane, tho.
> Put your Achems Razor hat on ...
One Russian airliner loss is usually an accident due
to incompetent maint, drunken pilot, overloading, etc.
Two within minutes raises Occam from his nap, and
suggests deliberate action.
> ... when the first plane went down it took out the
> second plane ...
Nope. Hundreds of miles apart.
Doesn't explain what happened to the first plane, tho.
Considering that the flights took off about an hour apart, for two different destinations, I'm not sure how that could be.
Terrorism, Error May Explain Russian Plane Crashes
By Oleg Shchedrov
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Terrorism, human error or mechanical mishap could have caused one of Russia's worst air tragedies in which two planes crashed almost simultaneously and killed at least 89 people, officials said on Wednesday.
President Vladimir Putin, acting swiftly before Sunday's presidential poll in rebel Chechnya, ordered the tightening of security at all Moscow's airports and put the Interior Ministry in charge of screening procedures.
Prosecutor General Vladimir Ustinov told Putin he had no clear view of what happened to the planes, which took off from Moscow's Domodedovo airport late on Tuesday around an hour apart for two different destinations.
They crashed within four minutes of each other.
"We are examining a number of versions, among them a terrorist act, and human and technical factors," Ustinov told Putin during a meeting with the heads of the FSB security service and the Emergencies Ministry shown on television.
A Tu-134 flying to Volgograd went down near the town of Tula south of Moscow. Within minutes and 500 miles away, a Tu-154 bound for the Black Sea resort of Sochi crashed near the southern town of Rostov-on-Don.
The owner of the Tu-154, Sibir Airlines, said the pilots had triggered a hijack alert just before their plane crashed and the aircraft seemed to have exploded in mid-air. It was carrying 46 passengers and crew.
Volga-Aviaexpress, a small regional carrier which owned the Tu-134, said the crew did not report any problems on board before the plane crashed with 43 passengers and crew. The Emergencies Ministry later said 44 people were aboard.
Aided with cranes, investigators sieved through high grasses in almost identical countryside near the two sites. Huge slabs of twisted metal, seats and the odd piece of clothing were scattered over dozens of miles.
FSB IN CHARGE
Putin, who broke off his summer holiday in the Black Sea resort of Sochi to return to Moscow, had ordered the FSB to investigate the case, which it is normally only asked to do if terrorism is suspected. Continued ...
© Reuters 2004. All Rights Reserved. At the link there is a map and you can see how far apart these crashes were.