Yaroslavl, September 08: A Russian jet plane carrying a top ice hockey team slammed into a riverbank moments after takeoff Wednesday, killing at least 43 people in one of the worst plane crashes involving a sports team. Two others on board were injured. The Russian authorities say the plane was carrying 37 passengers and eight crew members.
The Russian Emergency Situations Ministry said the Yak-42 plane crashed into the shores of the Volga River immediately after leaving the airport near the western city of Yaroslavl, 240 kilometers northeast of Moscow.
The plane was carrying the Lokomotiv ice hockey team traveling from Yaroslavl to Minsk, the capital of Belarus, where the team was to play a match in the Kontinental Hockey League.
Vladislav Tretiak, President of Russian Hockey Federation, said, “For hockey in Russia it is a big loss as there are a lot of good hockey players in Yaroslavl and candidates for the team so you see everyone is calling now. So we’ll do everything we can firstly to find out what happened and secondly to support the families so that hockey in Yaroslavl doesn’t die.”
So far, the cause of the crash remains unclear. But a source from the airport authorities at Yaroslavl told reporters that there were two possible causes of the crash: equipment failure or human error.
However, a spokesman of the Federal Air Transport Agency said that the YAK-42 had received maintenance services before its departure and nothing wrong was found with the plane.
After the accident, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev expressed his condolences to the families of those killed in the plane crash and to all fans of the Lokomotiv ice hockey team.
The crash was the third in Russia with a toll in the dozens in less than two years.
–Agencies–