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MOSCOW. — Russian divers yesterday found the main body of the military plane that crashed in the Black Sea with 92 people on-board, as senior officials said technical or pilot error, not terrorism, likely caused the crash.Following a massive search that continued overnight, Russian divers yesterday afternoon found several fragments of the plane one mile away from the coast of Sochi and about 25 metres under the sea, according to a statement released by the emergency situations ministry.
The discovery of the plane wreckage came shortly after senior Russian officials said pilot error or a technical fault — not terrorism — is likely to be the cause of the plane crash off the coast of Sochi.
All 84 passengers and eight crew members on the Russian military’s Tu-154 plane are believed to have died when it crashed shortly after take-off early Sunday in good weather from the southern Russian city of Sochi.
The passengers included dozens of singers in Russia’s world-famous military choir, nine Russian journalists and a Russian doctor known for her charity work in war zones.
Yesterday, the search operation involved more than 3 500 people on 45 ships — including 135 divers flown in from across Russia — sweeping a vast crash site at sea and along the shore, according to the Defence Ministry.
Five helicopters and drones were being used to help spot bodies and debris. Two deep-water submersibles arrived to aid the operation, which went on all through the night thanks to powerful searchlights.
The Black Sea search area — which covers over 10 square kilometres — is plagued by underwater currents that can carry debris and body fragments into the open sea.
The search party has not yet found the plane’s black boxes. However, the fact that the plane’s flight recorders did not have radio beacons meant that locating the black boxes was going to be a challenge underwater.
Reporting from Moscow, FRANCE 24’s Thomas Lowe noted that, “Transport Minister Maxim Sokolov has said publicly that they haven’t found the two black boxes yet. One of the problems is that there’s no radar signals on the type of black box that’s carried in this Tu-154 military airplane. That’s going to take them a lot longer to find the black box as would otherwise be the case.”
Speaking on television yesterday, Sokolov said terrorism was not among the main theories for the crash cause and that authorities were looking into a possible technical fault or a pilot error.
The intelligence agency FSB echoed his comments in the statement later, saying it “has not found any signs or facts pointing to a possible terror attack or sabotage on board”.
The intelligence agency is now focusing the probe on possibilities such as a pilot error, low quality of fuel, external objects getting in the engine or an unspecified technical fault.
The plane began its flight from Moscow’s military airport of Chkalovsky. The FSB insisted the plane was under its surveillance and that only two people, both FSB officers, got on-board when the jet landed in Sochi for refuelling. The plane did not carry any military or dual-use cargo, the FSB said.
Still, several aviation experts noted factors that could suggest a terror attack, such as the crew’s failure to report any malfunction and the fact that debris from the plane was scattered over a wide area.
“Possible malfunctions . . . certainly wouldn’t have prevented the crew from reporting them,” Vitaly Andreyev, a former senior Russian air traffic controller, told RIA Novosti.
The plane was taking the Defence Ministry’s choir, the Alexandrov Ensemble, to perform at a New Year’s concert at Hemeimeem air base in Syria’s coastal province of Latakia. Despite the Syrian connection, Sokolov said the government sees no need to heighten security measures at Russian airports.
Emergency crews found fragments of the plane about 1,5 kilometres from the shore Sunday, but a deputy defence minister told Russian news agencies that experts estimated the Tu-154 crash site at six kilometres from the shore. — France24/AP/AFP.
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