Two Russian pax a/c crashed within minutes of each other
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The FDRs have been read and the head of the investigation concludes it was an act of terrorism. From ITAR-TASS, a Russian news agency.
Cyclotrimethylenetrinitramine (Hexogen) is rarely used by itself. It can lead to seizures if inhaled or eaten, and is somewhat unstable. More likely is the hexogen found in the wreckage was part of a plastic explosive such as C-3, C-4, or Cyclotol
MOSCOW, August 29 (Itar-Tass) -- Igor Levitin, Transport Minister and head of the commission investigating the crash of Tu-134 and Tu-154 planes, said that their main theory is terrorist act.
“The commission keeps working, and we are considering all theories. The Federal Security Service said they had found traces of hexogen and main efforts are concentrated on that theory,” Levitin told Channel 1.
Information from flight recorders has been deciphered. “We can tell by their parameters that the plane disintegrated at the cruising altitude,” Levitin said.
“The commission keeps working, and we are considering all theories. The Federal Security Service said they had found traces of hexogen and main efforts are concentrated on that theory,” Levitin told Channel 1.
Information from flight recorders has been deciphered. “We can tell by their parameters that the plane disintegrated at the cruising altitude,” Levitin said.
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News update: The suspected suicide bombers shared an appartment in Grozny. They left Chechnya on a bus two days before the crashes, together with two other female flatmates who remain unaccounted for.
Russian plane suspects were friends from Chechnya
Izvestia article (Russian)
Russian plane suspects were friends from Chechnya
Izvestia article (Russian)
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Suspected Chechen Women Had Been Detained
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: September 15, 2004
Filed at 3:04 p.m. ET
MOSCOW (AP) -- Two Chechen women suspected of blowing up Russian passenger jets last month were briefly detained by police before the flights but bribed at least one airline employee to get on the planes, media reports said Wednesday.
One of the alleged suicide bombers used an intermediary to pay $34 to a Sibir airlines employee to board a jet, even though she had a ticket for a flight the next day, the Interfax news agency quoted Russia's Prosecutor General Vladimir Ustinov as saying. She got on the plane two minutes before check-in closed, he said.
The same intermediary also took a bribe from the other alleged suicide bomber to get on a Volga-Aviaexpress flight, he said.
Ustinov said both the intermediary and the Sibir airline employee have been arrested.
The two planes crashed almost simultaneously on the night of Aug. 24 after taking off from Moscow's Domodyedovo airport, killing 90 people.
Russian Transport Minister Igor Levitin said laboratory tests of the wreckage of the Sibir Tu-154 and the Volga-Aviaexpress Tu-134 confirmed the explosions that brought down the two planes both occurred in passenger cabins, reinforcing the suspicion that the two Chechen women were suicide bombers.
He said explosive residue and information from the planes' flight data recorders pointed to an explosion in the main cabin.
The women arrived at the airport the evening of Aug. 24, accompanied by two other Chechens, Ustinov told Interfax.
``Police officers spotted them, confiscated their passports and handed them over to a police captain responsible for anti-terrorism operations to examine their belongings,'' he was quoted as saying. ``The captain let them go without any check, and they started to try to obtain tickets in the same buildings.''
It is not unusual for Chechens to be stopped by police in Moscow for questioning.
One of the women had purchased a ticket for a flight scheduled the next day but -- after paying the bribe -- got on the earlier flight two minutes before check-in closed, Ustinov said.
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: September 15, 2004
Filed at 3:04 p.m. ET
MOSCOW (AP) -- Two Chechen women suspected of blowing up Russian passenger jets last month were briefly detained by police before the flights but bribed at least one airline employee to get on the planes, media reports said Wednesday.
One of the alleged suicide bombers used an intermediary to pay $34 to a Sibir airlines employee to board a jet, even though she had a ticket for a flight the next day, the Interfax news agency quoted Russia's Prosecutor General Vladimir Ustinov as saying. She got on the plane two minutes before check-in closed, he said.
The same intermediary also took a bribe from the other alleged suicide bomber to get on a Volga-Aviaexpress flight, he said.
Ustinov said both the intermediary and the Sibir airline employee have been arrested.
The two planes crashed almost simultaneously on the night of Aug. 24 after taking off from Moscow's Domodyedovo airport, killing 90 people.
Russian Transport Minister Igor Levitin said laboratory tests of the wreckage of the Sibir Tu-154 and the Volga-Aviaexpress Tu-134 confirmed the explosions that brought down the two planes both occurred in passenger cabins, reinforcing the suspicion that the two Chechen women were suicide bombers.
He said explosive residue and information from the planes' flight data recorders pointed to an explosion in the main cabin.
The women arrived at the airport the evening of Aug. 24, accompanied by two other Chechens, Ustinov told Interfax.
``Police officers spotted them, confiscated their passports and handed them over to a police captain responsible for anti-terrorism operations to examine their belongings,'' he was quoted as saying. ``The captain let them go without any check, and they started to try to obtain tickets in the same buildings.''
It is not unusual for Chechens to be stopped by police in Moscow for questioning.
One of the women had purchased a ticket for a flight scheduled the next day but -- after paying the bribe -- got on the earlier flight two minutes before check-in closed, Ustinov said.
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500 Rubles Clears the Path to the Airplane
http://www.moscowtimes.ru/stories/2004/09/17/003.html
500 Rubles Clears the Path to the Airplane
By Lyuba Pronina
Staff Writer People who privately sell and swap airline tickets -- like the person who helped two suspected suicide bombers board the planes that crashed almost simultaneously last month -- are still out in full force in airports, and a bribe of as little as 500 rubles ($17) can get anybody on board a domestic flight, according to aviation officials and media reports.
"Everybody knows them and everybody loves them, including the police, because they bring in extra profits," an airline official said. "These are mostly former airport employees -- baggage handlers or porters. They know everyone in the airport."
"Arutyunov is jobless but a former Domodedovo employee," the official said on condition of anonymity. "There are more like him who remain on the job."
Armen Arutyunov is the man detained for helping two Chechen women get on board the Sibir Tu-154 to Sochi and the Volga-Aviaexpress Tu-134 to Volgograd on the evening of Aug. 24. Both planes exploded in midair at about 11 p.m. that night.
Investigators found residue of explosives in the debris of both crashes, and suspicion has fallen on the two Chechen women, who boarded the flights at the last minute.
The identities of the women have not been established. They identified themselves as Satsita Dzhebirkhanova and Amanat Nagayeva, but were not using their own passports.
Summing up preliminary results to the crash investigation, Prosecutor General Vladimir Ustinov said Wednesday that Arutyunov charged the women a total of 5,000 rubles for his services.
He stepped in after the women were detained by airport police upon their arrival from Makhachkala, Dagestan, Ustinov said, Interfax reported. A police officer released them without a check, he said.
The women were apparently unnerved by the police stop and wanted to get on outbound flights as quickly as possible.
The woman calling herself Nagayeva had missed a Sibir flight to Volgograd and was hysterical, according to Kommersant. Arutyunov swapped her ticket for one on the Volga-Aviaexpress Tu-134.
The woman calling herself Dzhebirkhanova was supposed to fly to Sochi on a larger Sibir Il-86 the next morning. But two minutes before check-in closed for Sibir Flight 1047 to Sochi, Arutyunov gave her ticket and 1,000 rubles ($34) to a Sibir official overseeing check-in and boarding, Ustinov said.
"In violation of all regulations," the Sibir employee wrote on the ticket, "Admit on Flight 1047," Ustinov said.
The Sibir official, identified by the media as Nikolai Korenkov, was indeed detained a week after the crashes, but he did not violate any rules, Sibir said.
"It is his job to help out passengers, and he has the right to rebook passengers if there are available seats," Sibir deputy director Mikhail Koshman said.
He said that after the tickets were changed, both women went through the required security and baggage checks and received airport security stamps on their boarding passes.
"The prosecutor general is just looking to shift the blame," Koshman said.
Domodedovo Airport director Sergei Rudakov said video surveillance footage shows the women were properly checked by security.
"If the explosive substances are like sugar or honey, they cannot be detected," he said.
Rudakov said the airport, which is widely considered the country's most modern, fell victim to "the human factor."
"Ticket scalpers and illegal cabbies exist, and we fight them with some success but haven't eliminated them," he said.
The airline official who requested anonymity said the private business of selling and swapping tickets is rampant in airports across the country.
A passenger can pay an airport staffer as little as 500 rubles to be whisked past security checks or sent through staff-only corridors, he said.
"A 'client' just needs to ask an airport employee, who will then take him by the hand and lead him to the airplane," he said.
"There are many loopholes, especially at night. The easiest way is to go through staff-only. The fee is 200 rubles," he said.
For 100 rubles, a bus driver can be hired to take a passenger directly to the plane.
"Off-duty buses usually wait in a designated place. Then you give another 200 rubles to the airport boarding agent, who signs off on the passenger manifest," he said.
Selling plane seats under the counter is profitable for police and airline crews, who each get a cut of the money paid for the seats. Airline crews pocket half or the full sum of the ticket price.
Passengers do not always get paper tickets, and flight attendants sometimes give up their seats when the aircraft is full, the airline official said. Sometimes these passengers get on board when they do not have enough money to pay the full fare.
No one checks or counts passengers once they arrive at their destination airport on domestic flights.
If a plane is forced to land at another airport due to bad weather, the airline crew pays for the passenger's onward flight out of its cut.
Sergei Masterov, deputy head of flight safety at the Federal Air Transportation Agency, said he was not familiar with this practice.
"We have not registered any such cases," he said. "But there is such a thing as the human factor, and anything is possible."
500 Rubles Clears the Path to the Airplane
By Lyuba Pronina
Staff Writer People who privately sell and swap airline tickets -- like the person who helped two suspected suicide bombers board the planes that crashed almost simultaneously last month -- are still out in full force in airports, and a bribe of as little as 500 rubles ($17) can get anybody on board a domestic flight, according to aviation officials and media reports.
"Everybody knows them and everybody loves them, including the police, because they bring in extra profits," an airline official said. "These are mostly former airport employees -- baggage handlers or porters. They know everyone in the airport."
"Arutyunov is jobless but a former Domodedovo employee," the official said on condition of anonymity. "There are more like him who remain on the job."
Armen Arutyunov is the man detained for helping two Chechen women get on board the Sibir Tu-154 to Sochi and the Volga-Aviaexpress Tu-134 to Volgograd on the evening of Aug. 24. Both planes exploded in midair at about 11 p.m. that night.
Investigators found residue of explosives in the debris of both crashes, and suspicion has fallen on the two Chechen women, who boarded the flights at the last minute.
The identities of the women have not been established. They identified themselves as Satsita Dzhebirkhanova and Amanat Nagayeva, but were not using their own passports.
Summing up preliminary results to the crash investigation, Prosecutor General Vladimir Ustinov said Wednesday that Arutyunov charged the women a total of 5,000 rubles for his services.
He stepped in after the women were detained by airport police upon their arrival from Makhachkala, Dagestan, Ustinov said, Interfax reported. A police officer released them without a check, he said.
The women were apparently unnerved by the police stop and wanted to get on outbound flights as quickly as possible.
The woman calling herself Nagayeva had missed a Sibir flight to Volgograd and was hysterical, according to Kommersant. Arutyunov swapped her ticket for one on the Volga-Aviaexpress Tu-134.
The woman calling herself Dzhebirkhanova was supposed to fly to Sochi on a larger Sibir Il-86 the next morning. But two minutes before check-in closed for Sibir Flight 1047 to Sochi, Arutyunov gave her ticket and 1,000 rubles ($34) to a Sibir official overseeing check-in and boarding, Ustinov said.
"In violation of all regulations," the Sibir employee wrote on the ticket, "Admit on Flight 1047," Ustinov said.
The Sibir official, identified by the media as Nikolai Korenkov, was indeed detained a week after the crashes, but he did not violate any rules, Sibir said.
"It is his job to help out passengers, and he has the right to rebook passengers if there are available seats," Sibir deputy director Mikhail Koshman said.
He said that after the tickets were changed, both women went through the required security and baggage checks and received airport security stamps on their boarding passes.
"The prosecutor general is just looking to shift the blame," Koshman said.
Domodedovo Airport director Sergei Rudakov said video surveillance footage shows the women were properly checked by security.
"If the explosive substances are like sugar or honey, they cannot be detected," he said.
Rudakov said the airport, which is widely considered the country's most modern, fell victim to "the human factor."
"Ticket scalpers and illegal cabbies exist, and we fight them with some success but haven't eliminated them," he said.
The airline official who requested anonymity said the private business of selling and swapping tickets is rampant in airports across the country.
A passenger can pay an airport staffer as little as 500 rubles to be whisked past security checks or sent through staff-only corridors, he said.
"A 'client' just needs to ask an airport employee, who will then take him by the hand and lead him to the airplane," he said.
"There are many loopholes, especially at night. The easiest way is to go through staff-only. The fee is 200 rubles," he said.
For 100 rubles, a bus driver can be hired to take a passenger directly to the plane.
"Off-duty buses usually wait in a designated place. Then you give another 200 rubles to the airport boarding agent, who signs off on the passenger manifest," he said.
Selling plane seats under the counter is profitable for police and airline crews, who each get a cut of the money paid for the seats. Airline crews pocket half or the full sum of the ticket price.
Passengers do not always get paper tickets, and flight attendants sometimes give up their seats when the aircraft is full, the airline official said. Sometimes these passengers get on board when they do not have enough money to pay the full fare.
No one checks or counts passengers once they arrive at their destination airport on domestic flights.
If a plane is forced to land at another airport due to bad weather, the airline crew pays for the passenger's onward flight out of its cut.
Sergei Masterov, deputy head of flight safety at the Federal Air Transportation Agency, said he was not familiar with this practice.
"We have not registered any such cases," he said. "But there is such a thing as the human factor, and anything is possible."
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Siberia Tu154 CVR translation
22:53:10,4. Intensive boom , Loud noise starts and continues to the end of the tape.
22:53:11. Long scream of pain
22:53:13,7. Pressure loss beeper turns on. Main electric power is lost
22:53:15,4. Shouting
22:53:23,1. Cursing
22:53:31,8. Scream of pain ( the same voice as at 22:53:11)
22:53:36. Shouting smth indistinctly
22:53:45,9. Long scream of pain
22:53:48,7. Hey ! [ cursing, shouting indistinctly]
22:53:52,7. Long scream of pain
22:53:56,6. Co-pilot: Where are we now?
22:53:57,7. Shouting smth indistinctly
22:53:58,9. Scream of horror - co-pilot sees a crew member injured.
22:53:59,9 - 22:54:11,6. 1kHz beep sound (6 times)
22:53:59,9. Aaah [ scream]
22:54:00. First pilot : Where is it?
22:54:06,7. First pilot : Where is it?
22:54:09,6. Aaah [cursing]
22:54:10,6. Good bye everybody [ voice of the wounded crew member]
22:54:11. Both pilots shoutin
22:54:13,1. Loud boom sound [Pressure drops suddenly, tail breaks off???]
22:54:14,5. ATCC on the radio: [tail number] 85556, what’s your altitude?
[traffic controller sees radar mark of 85556 fading out]
22:54:19,2. ATCC: What happened?
22:54:21,1. Loss of cabin pressure!
22:54:22,8. Hull is breached!
22:54:25. Shouting, screaming
22:54:28,4. First pilot: Push it ![the yoke]
22:54:31,7. Co-pilot: Roger push [struggling]
22:54:32,5. ATCC: 85556, your altitude?
22:54:38,3. First pilot: Eight [ thousand meters?]
22:54:43. [a crew member] Where are we [flying now]?
22:54:45,2. First pilot: Wait!
22:54:46,1. Co-pilot: This is it ! It’s over
22:54:48,4. First pilot: 81
22:54:49,5. Co-pilot: roger
22:54:56,8. [a crew member] Oh Lord!
22:55:01,6. First pilot: No, no ! It is not here! [ cursing]
22:55:07,5. First pilot: Pull up!
22:55:08,8. Co-pilot: Pull up?
22:55:09,8. First pilot: Yes pull up!
22:55:10,3. First pilot: Do it!
22:55:12,5. Are you here?
22:55:14,8. Move back! Walk away!
22:55:16,7. Where are we going to crash?
22:55:19. Aaah!
22:55:20,3. First pilot: Pull up!
22:55:23,1. Scream
22:55:23,7. End of tape, impact
First pilot : Guryev Mikhail , 1956
Ex- military pilot (till 2004)
5732 hours total , of those 3505 hours as a TU154 first pilot
Co-pilot : Andrushenko Yuri , 1970
3800 hours total, of those 3320 hours as a TU154 co-pilot
22:53:11. Long scream of pain
22:53:13,7. Pressure loss beeper turns on. Main electric power is lost
22:53:15,4. Shouting
22:53:23,1. Cursing
22:53:31,8. Scream of pain ( the same voice as at 22:53:11)
22:53:36. Shouting smth indistinctly
22:53:45,9. Long scream of pain
22:53:48,7. Hey ! [ cursing, shouting indistinctly]
22:53:52,7. Long scream of pain
22:53:56,6. Co-pilot: Where are we now?
22:53:57,7. Shouting smth indistinctly
22:53:58,9. Scream of horror - co-pilot sees a crew member injured.
22:53:59,9 - 22:54:11,6. 1kHz beep sound (6 times)
22:53:59,9. Aaah [ scream]
22:54:00. First pilot : Where is it?
22:54:06,7. First pilot : Where is it?
22:54:09,6. Aaah [cursing]
22:54:10,6. Good bye everybody [ voice of the wounded crew member]
22:54:11. Both pilots shoutin
22:54:13,1. Loud boom sound [Pressure drops suddenly, tail breaks off???]
22:54:14,5. ATCC on the radio: [tail number] 85556, what’s your altitude?
[traffic controller sees radar mark of 85556 fading out]
22:54:19,2. ATCC: What happened?
22:54:21,1. Loss of cabin pressure!
22:54:22,8. Hull is breached!
22:54:25. Shouting, screaming
22:54:28,4. First pilot: Push it ![the yoke]
22:54:31,7. Co-pilot: Roger push [struggling]
22:54:32,5. ATCC: 85556, your altitude?
22:54:38,3. First pilot: Eight [ thousand meters?]
22:54:43. [a crew member] Where are we [flying now]?
22:54:45,2. First pilot: Wait!
22:54:46,1. Co-pilot: This is it ! It’s over
22:54:48,4. First pilot: 81
22:54:49,5. Co-pilot: roger
22:54:56,8. [a crew member] Oh Lord!
22:55:01,6. First pilot: No, no ! It is not here! [ cursing]
22:55:07,5. First pilot: Pull up!
22:55:08,8. Co-pilot: Pull up?
22:55:09,8. First pilot: Yes pull up!
22:55:10,3. First pilot: Do it!
22:55:12,5. Are you here?
22:55:14,8. Move back! Walk away!
22:55:16,7. Where are we going to crash?
22:55:19. Aaah!
22:55:20,3. First pilot: Pull up!
22:55:23,1. Scream
22:55:23,7. End of tape, impact
First pilot : Guryev Mikhail , 1956
Ex- military pilot (till 2004)
5732 hours total , of those 3505 hours as a TU154 first pilot
Co-pilot : Andrushenko Yuri , 1970
3800 hours total, of those 3320 hours as a TU154 co-pilot
