God, trying to discuss aviation with people who can't tell a 747 from an A340 is just about impossible.
Oh and for the record, I do NOT believe that TWA was shot down, either by the USN or by terrorists.
moscow airports closed
The Michael Rivero influence lives on at FR!
Two Planes Crash in Russia
By Peter Baker and Susan B. Glasser
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, August 24, 2004; 8:08 PM
MOSCOW, Aug. 25 (Wednesday) -- Two passenger jets that took off from a Moscow airport crashed within minutes of each other in different parts of southern Russia late Tuesday night with a total of about 90 people on board, authorities said. No survivors were reported.
Both planes left Moscow's Domodedovo Airport about 10:30 p.m. heading to separate southern cities and then disappeared from radar almost simultaneously about 11 p.m., authorities said. Rescue squads reached the scene of one crash in the Tula region south of Moscow early Wednesday morning and hours later found a fire that may be from wreckage of the second plane north of Rostov-on-Don.
Officials made no immediate statements about the possible cause of the twin crashes, but the extraordinary timing raised suspicions of a possible terrorist attack. Witnesses in Tula reported seeing an explosion on one of the planes before it plunged out of the sky, the Interfax news agency reported, citing local authorities.
President Vladimir Putin, who is vacationing in the Black Sea resort of Sochi where the other plane was heading, was quickly informed of the developments and ordered the Federal Security Service, the domestic successor to the KGB, to investigate the incident, the Kremlin said. Security was tightened at Russian airports.
The crashes took place just days before an election this Sunday in the separatist region of Chechnya intended to choose a successor to Akhmad Kadyrov, the Kremlin-allied provincial president who was assassinated in May. The approaching vote has already been marked by renewed fighting in the Chechen capital of Grozny, as well as elsewhere in the region.
Russia has been targeted by repeated terrorist strikes in the past two years, killing hundreds of civilians in Moscow and in southern Russia. Chechen guerrillas have claimed credit for many of the suicide bombings and other attacks.
"There's still a chance this is an appalling airplane maintenance problem, but it seems more likely this is a terrorist act, given the prevailing conditions in the region," said Fiona Hill, a Russia scholar at the Brookings Institution in Washington. "The whole of the North Caucasus is in considerable disarray."
Although Russian government officials have sought repeatedly in recent years to link Chechen separatist guerrillas with international terrorist groups such as al Qaeda, Hill said the possible airplane-based attack was not necessarily an indication of cooperation. "There's a situation where you have a demonstration effect -- what works in one place people adapt in another," she said. The fact that Putin is currently on vacation in Sochi, destination for one of the crashed planes, was "very symbolic, obviously," she added.
Aslan Maskhadov, the Chechen separatist leader, said in June that the Chechens planned an escalation in attacks against the Russians. "We're planning a change in our tactics," he said at the time. "From now on we'll be launching big attacks."
Maskhadov seemed to foreshadow the use of airplanes in a separate e-mail to the Reuters news agency last month. "If Chechens possessed warplanes or rockets, then airstrikes on Russian cities would also be legitimate," he said.
Authorities and activists had anticipated a major terrorist attack leading up to the Sunday election, in which the regional interior minister Alu Alkhanov is expected to win with the support of the Kremlin.
In an interview Tuesday before the plane crashes, Tatyana Lokshina of the Moscow Helsinki Group, a human rights organization, said the fighting in Grozny last weekend might be "some kind of prelude to some bigger event that would take place" on or before the election. "In the last few months, the level of violence has been steadily rising."
Terrorist attacks in the past year have focused on soft targets such as the Moscow subway and a rock concert. Security for domestic flights at Russian airport has often been criticized as lax.
Flight 1303, a Tu-134 operated by Volga-Avia-Express airline, arrived at Moscow at 9:20 p.m. from the southern city of Volgograd, known as Stalingrad during World War II, then loaded new passengers and took off again at 10:32 p.m., according to Russian news reports.
It disappeared at 10:56 p.m. with 34 passengers and eight crew members aboard. Authorities found wreckage from the plane in Tula.
Flight 1047, a Tu-154 operated by Sibir airline, left Moscow at 10:35 p.m. heading for Sochi, then vanished from Russian radar at 10:59 p.m., according to news reports. Interfax reported that 38 passengers and eight crew members were aboard, while the RIA-Novosti news agency put the number of passengers at 44.
Four hours after the crash, rescue personnel were still searching for the remains of the aircraft about 82 miles from Rostov-on-Don. About 3 a.m. they found a fire they believed could indicate the scene of the crash.