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MOSCOW, Sunday, July 9 — A Russian passenger airliner flying from Moscow to Siberia crashed as it landed at an airport on Sunday morning. At least 145 of the 200 people on board died, according to initial reports, while the others were hospitalized, many with burns.
The airplane, an Airbus A-310 flying from Moscow, veered off the runway as it was landing in Irkutsk, a regional capital close to Lake Baikal in Siberia, a spokeswoman for the Emergency Situations Ministry in Moscow said.
The plane then struck a concrete barrier and burst into flames, according to the Emergency Situations Ministry. Ekho Moskvy radio reported that many of the passengers were children traveling to vacation on the lake, the world's largest body of fresh water.
The impact of the collision destroyed nose of the plane, but at least some of the passengers managed to evacuate through the plane's rear door, the Russian news agency Interfax reported. The plane burned for more than two hours before the fires were extinguished.
Preliminary reports on the deaths and injuries were sketchy and contradictory. All eight crew members, two pilots and six flight attendants, were reported to have been killed. The ministry spokeswoman, Nataliya Lukash, said that 55 people were hospitalized, while other reports cited lower figures. By 8 a.m. in Moscow, 65 bodies had been pulled from the charred wreckage.
The cause of the crash was not immediately clear.
"Something happened to the wheels and veered from the runway," Ms. Lukash said in a telephone interview.
The crash was the second in two months involving an Airbus trying to land in Russia. On May 3, an A-320 operated by the Armenian national airline, Armavia, crashed in the Black Sea as it tried to land in stormy weather at the Russian coastal resort, Sochi. All 113 people aboard that flight died, and the cause has not yet been established.
After a chaotic period in the 1990's that saw many crashes of aging Soviet-era planes, Russian air safety has improved significantly. Airlines have bought new planes, including Airbuses and Boeings, and expanded routes domestically and internationally.
The Airbus A310 is typically set up by airlines with 220 passenger seats. At 153 feet long, it is in the middle range of Airbus models, bigger than the A320 but smaller than the A300 and the A330.
The plane that crashed on Sunday was operated by S7 Airlines, known until recently as Sibir Airlines. It is Russia's second largest airline, after the state-controlled Aeroflot.
S7 has 100 flights a day out of its hubs in Moscow and in Novosibirsk and Irkutsk in Siberia. Last year, the company adopted its new name and redesigned its aircraft in a distinctive yellow green color.
The airline lost another of its planes in August 2004 when a suicide bomber destroyed a Tupolev-154 as it was flying from Moscow to Sochi. A bomb destroyed a second plane in simultaneous terrorist attacks that killed 90 people.
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Originally Posted by Alware 
