Article from BTNews 6 MAY 2019
Aircraft incident at Moscow
As BTN was being readied for publication on Sunday evening, news arrived concerning a major incident at Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport.
At around 21:40 local time, an Aeroflot Sukhoi Superjet 100 made an emergency landing after a fire broke out on board. Videos on social media showed passengers using emergency exit slides to escape and running away from the burning aircraft. Reports suggest 41 people have died. The plane was on a scheduled flight to Murmansk in the far north with 73 passengers and five crew.
The Interfax news agency reports a distress signal shortly after departure.
The SS100 first flew in 2008 and entered airline service in 2011, with around 150 built to date. It has had a troubled history with a demonstration aircraft crashing in May 2012, put down to pilot error, and at least two further major incidents reported, without loss of life.
Irish airline CityJet took delivery of its first SS100 in June 2016 and BTN flew on it out of Dublin and was impressed from a passenger point of view. CityJet added a further four aircraft for wet-lease services but now no longer operates the type (See BTN 20 June 2016).
The aircraft involved in yesterday's inhcident, MSN 95135, was produced in August 2017. It was under scheduled maintenance at the beginning of April 2019.
Please note it is BTN'S policy not to use images for aircraft incidents including a loss of life. In our opinion, it does not add to the story.
OUR READERS' FINEST WORDS (All times and dates are GMT)
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Ray Mayne, Uk
Plane on fire, but plenty of time to get your luggage out of the overhead bins before evacuating! Did this contribute to the loss of life? What has to be done to stop this?