A Russian military plane carrying 92 people – including members of the famed Russian Army Choir – crashed Sunday into the Black Sea en route to Syria, where they had planned a New Year’s show for troops at an air base, officials said.
The Tu-154 plane went down at 5:25 a.m. local time two minutes after taking off from the southern resort city of Sochi, where it had stopped to refuel from Moscow en route to Russia’s Hmeymim airbase, Defense Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov told local media.
“No survivors have been spotted,” he said, Reuters reported.
Transport Minister Maxim Sokolov, who was overseeing the rescue efforts, said investigators were considering a “whole spectrum” of possibilities about the cause of the crash.
Some experts were suspicious by the lack of a mayday call from the pilots to report a malfunction.
“Possible malfunctions … certainly wouldn’t have prevented the crew from reporting them,” Vitaly Andreyev, a former senior Russian air traffic controller, told RIA Novosti — adding that it points at an “external impact.”
Earlier, senior Russian lawmakers ruled out a terror attack, saying the plane was tightly secured.
The Interfax news agency quoted a law enforcement source as saying that the plane took off from a heavily guarded military site outside Moscow.
“Infiltrating it in order to plant an explosive device on a plane does not appear possible. For its part, the airport in Sochi is a dual-purpose one and has increased security,” the source said.
Defense official Viktor Ozerov said the crash could have been caused by a technical malfunction or pilot error. The black boxes had yet to be found.
Konashenkov said 32 ships, 80 divers, five helicopters and drones were deployed to the crash site.
At least 10 bodies had been recovered off the coast of Sochi, as authorities launched a frantic search operation, Agence France-Presse reported.
“Fragments of the Tu-154 plane of the Russian Defense Ministry were found 1.5 kilometers (0.9 miles) from the Black Sea coast of the city of Sochi at a depth of 50 to 70 meters (165 to 230 feet),” the ministry said.
The Soviet-era Tupolev, built in 1983, had been carrying 84 passengers and eight crew members. The contingent from the Alexandrov Ensemble — known internationally as the Red Army Choir — included 64 singers, dancers, orchestra members and its conductor, Valery Khalilov.
The choir sang “Get Lucky” at the opening of the 2014 Winter Olympics that Russia hosted in Sochi, becoming an instant online hit.
“Losing such a great collective all at once is a great tragedy,” Moscow city’s culture department head Alexander Kibovsky said, RIA Novosti reported.
Viktor Yeliseyev, director of the rival choir of the Russian National Guard, said “most singers of the choir have died.”
The passengers included Elizaveta Glinka, a doctor and acclaimed charity worker who served on the Kremlin human rights council, who was traveling to Syria to bring medication to a university hospital in the coastal city of Latakia, AFP reported.
President Vladimir Putin, who declared Monday a national day of mourning, presented Glinka with an award this month.
“We never feel sure that we will come back alive,” Glinka said at the Kremlin award ceremony. “But we are sure that kindness, compassion and charity are stronger than any weapon.”
Nine Russian reporters and some military servicemen also were on board.
The military base has been used to launch air strikes in Moscow’s military campaign supporting its ally President Bashar al-Assad in Syria’s civil war.
Konashenkov said the Soviet-built, three-engine Tupolev aircraft had accumulated about some 7,000 hours flight hours since coming into service in 1983. It last underwent repairs in December 2014 and was serviced in September, he said.
The plane, which was designed in the late 1960s, has been used extensively by carriers in Russia and worldwide.
In April 2010, high-ranking Polish officials, including then president Lech Kaczynski, were killed when a Tu-154 crashed on approach to Smolensk airport in Russia. An Investigation blamed pilot error in bad weather conditions.
In recent years, Russian airlines have replaced their Tu-154s with more modern aircraft — but the Russian military and some government agencies have continued to use them.
“It’s an excellent plane, which has proven its reliability during decades of service,” veteran pilot Oleg Smirnov told Russian TV.
Russian planes have been downed previously by terror attacks.
In October 2015, a Russian passenger plane carrying mostly Russian tourists back from vacation in Egypt was brought down by a bomb over the Sinai, killing all 224 people aboard.
Officials said the explosive device was planted in the luggage compartment. The local ISIS affiliate claimed responsibility.
With Post Wires