Aircraft comes down in snow drift at Omsk during take off (300 words)

Published: 1/29/2001

The single An-70 prototype crashed into a snowdrift seconds after taking off from Omsk in Siberia on the 27th of January. According to early reports from the Ministry of Emergency Situations, two of the aircraft's four D-27 engines malfunctioned and stopped, bringing the aircraft down at the airport's perimeter fence. The aircraft, in other reports, is reported to have hit the runway and broken up on impact, but this differs from other sources, that say the aircraft was landed off the runway in a snow drift narrowly avoiding the perimeter posts that the emergency services say could have ruptured the aircraft's fuel tanks with 38 tonnes of fuel on board. According to Leonid Terentyev,the General Director of the Medium Transport Aircraft consortium producing the aircraft, despite losing power in two of its engines the aircraft has remiained stable and the pilot had been able to undertake a landing on the aircraft's fuselage, which Terentyev said has remained in tact, but that it was to early to say whether the aircraft could be repaired.The impact of the crash on the aircraft's development programme could be a delay of 10 months said Terentyev. The aircraft was carrying a compliment of 11 flights crew and 22 engineers, four of whom were injured, with two reported to be in a critical condition. The An-70 was on a cold weather test flight from Kiev to Yakutsk and was making a planned stop at the airport. The crash will be a setback for programme, which lost the original prototype in a collision with a chase aircraft in 1995, leading to the completion of the static test aircraft for flight trials in 1996. The crash also comes at a time when officials of the Russian Ministry of Defence were reported to be in the Ukraine discussing the plane's future deployment by the Russian Air Force.

Article ID: 2329