Russian airplanes hijacked & crashed?
 

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/20...nt_1880223.htm
http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/europe...ash/index.html

no clue yet if it was a Chechen group or someone else.

Very sad. It will be interesting to see who takes credit for this murder.

I read that they have ruled out terrorism and that it was an equipment malfunction. It's such a tragedy though :(

The story kind of sends mixed messages:

"Explosives specialists were still working at the scene and terrorism was still being considered a possible cause."

"Officials said one of the jets sent a distress signal that may have indicated a hijacking.

Russia's main intelligence agency, however, said it had found no evidence of terrorism in initial investigations at the crash sites.

The Federal Security Service, or FSB, said it was investigating other possibilities including technical failures, the use of poor quality fuel, breaches of fuelling regulations and also pilot error.

Spokesman Sergei Ignatchenko said that studies of the wreckage of the two planes indicated that terrorist act had been carried out."

Basically they don't know.

-Rudey

In a nutshell.

To coin a phrase.

It appears to be terrorism after all.

http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/europe...ash/index.html

I wonder if she used the saline-solution bottle bomb.

Interesting as NPR pointed out this morning that the Russians didn't stop all air traffic as we did on 9/11.

For such a vast country, Russia doesn't have much of a commercial airline infrastructure as the United States. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the mega-monolithic airline Aeroflot was broken up into much smaller and independent carriers. Aeroflot today flies only international routes, largely with Western aircraft.

The independent airlines, saddled with grossly inefficient older Russian-built aircraft and cut-throat competition for the few viable air routes don't seem to last very long in business.

In case anyone's wondering, the international hijack distress transponder code is 7500 (for a radio failure it's 7600 and the general emergency distress signal is 7700). Pilots are drilled never to select these codes unless in an actual emergency.

There are other methods to identify your aircraft on the ground as hijacked; one being taxiing around the airport with full flaps down or landing lights full on. This why you see airplanes quickly pull up their flaps and turn off their landing lights as soon as they clear the runway. There is a duress code pilots use when communicating via radio as well (that's generally kept confidential).