﻿Shock And Grief After Russian Plane Crash.

By Natalya Shurmina

YEKATERINBURG, Russia (Reuters) - Shocked and wailing relatives of 145 people killed in an air crash gathered at Russian airports on Wednesday waiting for flights to the scene of the country's worst civil air disaster in years.

Investigators sifted through smoking wreckage in a clearing in Siberian woods and recovered both flight recorders from the Tupolev 154 airliner, but there were few clues to the cause of the crash, which occurred late on Tuesday.

Television pictures showed a crash site strewn with debris and corpses. Only the plane's rear wing was intact, bearing the logo of airline Vladivostokavia.

Officials said there were no survivors.

The plane went down while circling for a scheduled landing in Irkutsk, halfway through a flight from Yekaterinburg in the Ural Mountains to Vladivostok on Russia's Pacific coast.

It made two abortive attempts to land and crashed on its third approach, dropping from the sky about 18 miles from Irkutsk and bursting into flames.

"They are not telling us why the plane crashed, but what they are telling us is that the pilot's last words were, "I see the landing strip", said Roza Gavrikova, weeping at Yekaterinburg airport. Her husband had been on the flight.

"Son. Granddaughter", said an elderly man who clutched his face and burst into tears.

Yekaterinburg airport spokesman Valery Goncharov said the plane had carried 136 passengers and nine crew, including 12 Chinese nationals and six children. An Emergencies Ministry spokesman said 143 bodies had been found at the site.

NO CONCLUSION ON CAUSES

Investigators drew no conclusions on the cause of the crash. At the scene, Emergencies Minister Sergei Shoigu told television reporters: "All the commentary you need is right here. What comment can I make?

"So far it is not clear to experts -- it is not clear how aerodynamically this could happen. It was the third approach, 2,800 ft altitude. The plane as you can see is facing practically 180 degrees off its course.

"Judging by first impressions it fell flat, because debris is not very widely spread. We will now look around in the trees to see if it got caught on anything", he said.

"Clearly there is nobody alive, that is already obvious".

The plane's two "black box" flight recorders were recovered. But Deputy Transport Minister Karl Ruppel told Reuters it was not clear what condition they were in or how long it would take to decode them.

Vladivostokavia is one of hundreds of tiny domestic carriers in Russia which emerged when internal routes were split off from flagship carrier Aeroflot when the Soviet Union broke up.

Airline deputy director Vladimir Razbezhkin told reporters in Vladivostok that the airline had bought the jet two months ago from China and had overhauled it. Russian media said China was selling off an aging fleet of Soviet-built Tupolev 154s.

Airline officials said they would fly relatives to Irkutsk from Vladivostok and Yekaterinburg.

In Yekaterinburg, flight attendant Svetlana Basmanova, whose crew rotated with the doomed crew, said that among her lost colleagues were a husband and wife who left seven children.

"We arrived on that flight, and said goodbye to the girls (in the departing crew). As always we wished them clear skies", she said. "I never want to fly. I'm going home by train".

The Kremlin said President Vladimir Putin (news - web sites) had ordered a government commission to be set up to investigate the crash.

The Tupolev 154, the main medium-range workhorse of Russia's civil jet fleet, has crashed three other times on Russian soil since 1994, killing more than 350 people.

Russia has an elderly civil aviation fleet, mostly built in Soviet times, but had not suffered a major civilian air disaster in several years. A Russian military plane crashed in Georgia last October, killing more than 80 people on board. 

