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An Russian International Airways flight en route from Moscow to Hong Kong crashed in Siberia on Wednesday, killing all 75 passengers and crew in Aeroflot's first international accident in eight years.
Aviation officials said they did not know what caused the crash of the European-made Airbus A-310, the top of the Aeroflot line and only one of five in their fleet. Some reports said that sabotage was a possibility.
"In principle these are reliable aircraft, so it's strange," said Viktor Kurenkov, deputy director of the international division of the Air Traffic Control Committee. "What could have happened on board is still not known."
The half-full plane went down around four hours after takeoff, 3,750 kilometers east of Moscow near Novokuznetsk, north of the Mongolian border.
The Committee on Emergency Situations said that 23 foreigners were aboard including Britons, an Indian, an American and Chinese from Hong Kong, Taiwan and People's Republic of China. Other unconfirmed reports said there were also two Latvians aboard, or that a Canadian or an Australian were among the dead, and Russian television later put the foreign death toll at 26.
Flight 593 fell off the radar screen at 12:49 A.M. local time Wednesday without sending out any distress messages, and local residents soon after heard an explosion, officials said. Vasily Sirchenkov, deputy mayor of nearby Mezhdurechensk, visited the site later in the day and said that the blast had a limited impact.
"The pieces of the aircraft did not scatter very widely," he said by telephone. "The bodies of the passengers are intact and recognizable."
Aviation experts said that the explosion took place after the airline had crashed from an altitude of 10,000 meters into a hilly area covered by snow.
"The explosion was on the ground from the impact of the crash," Rudolf Teimurazov, chairman of the Flight Safety Commission of the Interstate Aviation Committee, said in an interview.
But others speculated that the plane could have been sabotaged. Yury Vorobyov, first deputy minister for emergency situations, said a terrorist act could have caused the crash, Interfax reported.
"Pilot error is unlikely because something took out both their flight control and their radio at the same time," said Keir Giles, head of Russ-Sky, a company specializing in Russian aviation. "My inclination at the moment -- 60-40 -- is that it is some form of sabotage or bomb."
Local rescue teams set off for the site soon after the crash, but were hampered by the Siberian taiga, according to the Committee on Emergency Situations. Helicopters could not land, and heavy machinery was needed to carve a path through the forest to get to the plane.
Aviation experts left for the site Wednesday and plan to begin work on Thursday alongside technical advisers from Airbus, who arrived from France.
Aeroflot leased five new Airbuses two years ago, and since then passengers have praised the modern, wide-bodied craft for providing Western standards for the first time in Russian aviation history. Adorned with the red and blue Aeroflot logo, the planes fly to a variety of Western Europe and Asian cities.
Aeroflot says it has lost $22 million on the Airbus deal over the past two years because of high operating and leasing costs, Reuters reported last week. Overall, Aeroflot International made a profit last year, charging fares like 1.1 million rubles ($630) for Russians and 2.8 million for foreigners for the flight from Moscow to Hong Kong.
Dominique Masson, a spokeswoman for Airbus, emphasized that the plane had an excellent safety record, but added that they do not oversee the craft's daily maintenance.
According to Interfax, maintenance was carried out by Veritas, a French company that serviced the Aeroflot Airbuses under a 1991 agreement.
The Airbus 310 is made by a consortium of four European companies: France's Aerospatiale, British Aerospace, Deutsche Airbus, a subsidiary of Germany's Daimler-Benz and Constructiones Aeronauticas of Spain.
The engines are made by the U.S. company General Electric, Moscow representative Thomas Crozier said.
Although domestic Aeroflot suffers from frequent aviation catastrophes, Russian officials have prided themselves on their international safety record. The last international Aeroflot accident occurred in December 1986, when a Soviet-built Tupolev-134 crashed near East Berlin, killing up to 70 people. An Airbus A-310 has crashed only once previously, in Thailand in July 1992, killing 113 people. There have been other close calls, including a July 1993 emergency landing of a Turkish Airlines Airbus A-310 after an engine cover fell off.
Kurenkov of the Air Traffic Control Committee said the Airbus accident marked the first time a Western aircraft had crashed in Russia -- excluding the 1983 military destruction of a Korean Airlines Boeing 747 in Soviet airspace.
Domestic Russian airlines have a far less impressive safety record, and already this year have suffered a major air disaster in Siberia that killed at least 120.