Dont really know why i'm posting this on a JW forum. I found the story very sad. I work for an airline and live not too far from the place of the accident.
http://europe.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/europe/07/04/siberia.plane/index.html
MOSCOW, Russia -- Both flight recorders have been recovered from the scene of a Russian plane crash in which more than 140 people died.
Relatives of the passengers were being flown to the scene of destruction at the town of Irkutsk on Wednesday, but were not being told the cause of the accident.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has ordered an investigatory commission to be set up, headed by deputy prime minister Ilya Klebanov, who was in charge of last year's inquiry into the sinking of the submarine, the Kursk.
Roza Gavrikova, whose husband died in Wednesday's plane accident, said: "They are not telling us why the plane crashed, but what they are telling us is that the pilot's last words were, 'I see the landing strip,'"
The plane had been flying at an altitude of 2,800 feet (930 metres) when it suddenly made a 180-degree turn and crashed, Russian Emergency Situations Minister Sergei Shoigu told reporters.
He said: "It is so hard to comprehend how it could happen. It is a weird accident."
But deputy transport minister Karl Ruppel told Reuters such an event was "practically impossible."
Ruppel also dismissed media speculation that there may have been an explosion on board, saying the wreckage appeared to be too compact to indicate a blast.
Instead, Harrigan said investigators will be looking at the possibilities that the plane had run-out of fuel, that the crash had been the result of pilot error, or that there had been a problem with the engines.
He added, that three minutes before the plane's fall from the skies, the pilot had said "everything is OK."
Early reports had said that 133 passengers and 10 crew had been on board the plane when it plunged into woods about 34 kilometres (21 miles) from the Siberian city of Irkutsk -- 4,200 kilometres (2,600 miles) east of Moscow.
But a Russian official told news agencies that 136 passengers and nine crew had died, with 12 of the passengers likely to have been Chinese.
The TU-154 plane exploded as it attempted to make a third attempt at landing for a routine refueling stop at 2.10 a.m. local time on Wednesday (1710 GMT on Tuesday), Russian media said.
Russia mourns
A day of mourning has been announced in parts of Russia's far east.
Flight attendant Svetlana Basmanova, whose crew had just swapped with the doomed team, said she never wanted to fly again.
Charter flights were arranged to take relatives of the dead to the crash site
"We arrived on that flight, and said goodbye to the girls (in the departing crew). As always we wished them clear skies."
Relatives of the deceased were expected to be offered $414 in insurance payments from the airline, the Associated Press quoted Interfax as saying.
The plane, owned by the Vladivostok Avia company, was flying east from Yekaterinburg in the Urals in south central Russia to Vladivostok, a major port on the Pacific coast.
The area around the crash site is surrounded by dachas, or country retreats, near Lake Baikal, but there have been no reports of people on the ground being killed.
NTV television showed a scorched clearing strewn with smoking wreckage. Only the plane's rear wing was intact amid a mangled engine, a wheel and fragments of white fuselage.
Airline deputy director Vladimir Razbezhkin told reporters that the airline had bought the jet two months earlier from China and had since carried out renovations.
The TU-154, which can carry up to 180 passengers, is the workhorse for Russia's many airlines, carrying about half of all Russian air passengers.
It was designed as the Soviet counterpart to the Boeing 727 and the European-made Trident, but with the added ability to operate from short, rough runways. About 1,000 were produced.
The plane has been involved in 28 air disasters since it was created in 1968. Most have happened after the break-up of Aeroflot into hundreds of so-called baby-Aeroflots flying domestic routes following the collapse of the Soviet Union.
In 1994, a TU-154 jet crashed on take-off from Irkutsk, killing 124 people, after it was reportedly overloaded.
Maintenance and repairs had deteriorated on the planes, but its record has improved in recent years.