A passenger plane down in Black Sea

[TObject]

A passenger plane on route from Israel to Russia went down at the Black Sea. Pilots of another plane that was in the area, reported that they saw explosions while the airliner was going down. Here are some probable causes:

- Ukraine had a military exercise going on within 200 miles from where the plane went down. The passenger plane may have been shut down accidentally.
- An independent terrorist cell shut the plane down from the Krymea peninsula.
- Terrorist act on board of the aircraft.

Apparently there were 66 passengers and 11 crewmembers on board of the downed airliner (this information is not exact).

[TObject]

Click here to see a picture of the actual aircraft that went down.

[Ace!]

I saw the story at lunch. Looks like an errant missile (or so they thought a couple hours ago). Pretty sad.

Áron O'Proinntigh is ainm dom

[TObject]

One of the rescue cutters found the pilot compartment, they towed it to a larger ship and currently trying to get it out from the water by crane. I hope that the data recorder is there.

According to CNN, US satellite detected signatures of two SA-5 (S-200) missiles fired from the shore. Those things can fly far, and technically could easily (More so, than the S-300 system that was actually used in exercises in question) hit the plane that went down near the RABIT point. Could be some kind of glitch in the Ukrainian Air Defense systems. Maybe the “Friend-Enemy” transmitter on board of the plane failed (such a thing happened once in Russia in ‘70s)…

[pimp]

was this an act of terror or just a goof up

[TObject]

I don’t know. It could also be a technical problem in the fuel system. Remember TWA-800?

[Jeff Weston]

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by TObject:
Click {See link in one of the messages above} to see a picture of the actual aircraft that went down.[/quote]

Oh, you mean a Boeing 727 crashed? Talk about a clone! I noticed that many of the Soviet commercial planes looked like copies of the Boeings. I actually flew on one of those planes when I was over there. We boarded it via a stairway which dropped out the back (I believe the 727 does that also).

Anyway, that really sucks!

Jeff

[This message was edited by JeepBBS on October 04, 2001 at 06:51 PM.]

[TObject]

Well, it’s a plane. What did you expect it to look like, a flying saucer?

Looks like you know your planes. The original Tu-154 (NATO classification “Careless”) was build using the schema similar to Boeing 727, although it got more powerful engines. Those planes were around since 1971. The Tu-154M variety (the plane that went down was Tu-154M) is an upgraded version of the original with more economic engines (more than 23 thousand pounds of trust each).

Here is Tu-154M:


And here is Boeing 727-100:


[This message was edited by TObject on October 04, 2001 at 07:18 PM.]

[Jeff Weston]

To,

Is there no end to you internet resources? You have a gift of finding nice links and pics for what seems like every post. As for my knowledge of planes, it's nothing spectacular. The way the airports were in the former USSR all the planes were visible (not pulled up to gates). It wasn't hard to notice the similarities between the US & USSR passenjer jets. The insides were a different story. Seats were often soft "slingback" style, overhead storage was open (similar to a bus), none of the plates/cups, etc. were disposable and the flies had frequent flier miles up the wazoo! You certainly didn't want to be anywhere near the restroom. It was definitely a super cool experience. What was real neat was driving along the edge of the LAX runway (I used to live right there by the beach) and seeing a big Aeroflot jet there right after they started non-stop service between our two countries.

Oh well, I'm sure this is interesting for everybody else, not.

Jeff