Jet Carrying Russian Miners To Island Crashes, Killing 141 Arctic Accident Is Norway’s Worst Air Disaster Ever
A Russian charter jet shuttling coal miners from Moscow to work on a remote Norwegian island slammed into a snow-covered mountain near its arctic destination Thursday, apparently killing all 141 people aboard.
It was Norway’s worst air disaster and the deadliest for the deteriorating aviation system inherited by Russia and other former Soviet republics nearly five years ago.
Norwegian air traffic controllers lost contact with the Tupelov Tu-154 jet during what they called its routine approach to Spitsbergen Island’s airport. It struck the peak of Opera Mountain, about six miles away and 3,000 feet above sea level, and broke into pieces.
Rescue crews reached the snowbound crash site by helicopter but later suspended their search because of fog and freezing winds.
The jet was taking 129 Russians and Ukrainians to a Russian mining company town on the desolate island. Under a 1920 treaty, Russia shares mining rights on Spitsbergen and the rest of the Svalbard archipelago, 400 miles north of the Norwegian mainland, and shuttles miners there under two-year contracts. The travelers included 37 miners’ wives and children.
Twelve crew members were reported aboard the jet, owned by Russia’s Vnukovo Airlines and chartered to the mining company, ArktikUgol Trust.
Since its breakdown from the monopoly Aeroflot into more than 400 carriers - many of them with little startup cash - the former Soviet air fleet has logged an abysmal safety record and more than 1,000 crash fatalities. It is plagued by poor maintenance, safety violations and such cost-cutting tricks as cargo overloading and using substandard fuel.
Whether any such factor contributed to Thursday’s disaster was unclear, as officials in neither country offered an explanation.
Authorities on Spitsbergen said they detected no distress signal from the jet as it approached in cloudy skies with light winds and four-mile visibility. “It is not a difficult airport,” Bjoerne Hattestad of Norwegian Aeronautical Inspection told reporters in Norway, adding that the landing guidance systems were found to be in working order.
Vnukovo Airlines said the captain had flown Tu-154s for two decades and the same route many times.