MOUNT SALAK, Indonesia, (Reuters) – A rescue team found bodies but no survivors yesterday in the wreckage of a Russian passenger jet that crashed into a volcano in Indonesia during an exhibition flight with 45 people on board.
The Superjet 100 aircraft went missing on Wednesday about 40 miles (60 km) south of Jakarta.
Among the victims were Indonesian reporters and businessmen, eight Russians including embassy officials, pilots and technicians, two Italians, a French citizen and an American, the head of Sukhoi Civil Aircraft, Vladimir Prisyazhnyuk, said.
“We haven’t found survivors,” a spokesman for the search and rescue team, Gagah Prakoso, told Indonesia’s Metro TV.
Radio contact with the aircraft was lost in the middle of Wednesday’s promotional sales flight after it dropped to 6,000 ft (1,800 m) near Indonesia’s dormant Mount Salak volcano. A helicopter spotted debris on the side of the 7,254-ft (2,200-m) peak, sending rescue teams trekking across steep and heavily forested terrain to reach the site.
An aerial picture appeared to show that the plane had hit the top of a wall of rock. Small pieces of white debris could be seen scattered down an exposed stretch of cliff. The cause of the tragedy is not known.
Sukhoi, which had hoped to sell 42 of the planes to Indonesia, is part of the state-owned United Aircraft Corporation, an umbrella corporation Russian leader Vladimir Putin created in 2006 to reorganise and revive the country’s aircraft industry.
Shares in the state-owned company fell by as much as 7 percent on Thursday as markets reopened in Moscow after a three-day holiday, before recovering to stand down 2 percent.
Putin ordered Russian representatives to take part in the investigation into the crash.
AIRCRAFT FOR EXPORT
Moscow will hope the crash of the flagship aircraft will not reduce confidence in its civilian aircraft industry.
“Experts are saying that the plane has been working impeccably well and that possibly it was human error,” Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin told reporters while travelling with Putin in Nizhny Tagil in Russia’s Ural mountains.
