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Ukraine controllers allowed crashed Russian jet to change route

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Air traffic controllers in Ukraine allowed the crew of a Russian airliner that crashed Tuesday with the loss of everyone on board to change course in a bid to avoid a storm, a spokesman said Wednesday.
KIEV, August 23 (RIA Novosti) - Air traffic controllers in Ukraine allowed the crew of a Russian airliner that crashed Tuesday with the loss of everyone on board to change course in a bid to avoid a storm, a spokesman said Wednesday.

A Tu-154 crashed in eastern Ukraine en route from a Russian Black Sea resort to St. Petersburg, Russia's second biggest city. Pulkovo Airlines, which owned the plane, said Wednesday morning that 170 people - including 45 children under the age of 12 - had been killed. Other sources had suggested 171 passengers and crew had lost their lives.

Ukrainian ground controllers allowed the captain to fly 20 kilometers (12 miles) east of the original route because of poor weather, Mykola Rudkovskiy, head of a Ukrainian government commission investigating the crash, told local Channel Five Wednesday.

"When the plane entered the zone of Ukrainian flight controllers, the crew requested permission to fly 20 kilometers east of the route in view of deteriorating weather," he said. "The controllers agreed."

Rudkovskiy said a cyclone had affected the plane, whose flight plan took it across Ukraine even though it was flying between two Russian cities, but said it was too early to speak of any exact causes of the crash. Preliminary reports that emerged Tuesday evening suggested the three-engine Tu-154, the mainstay of the Russian aircraft fleet, had been hit by lightning.

"The plane was caught in a thunderstorm and hit by a lightning strike," a representative of the emergency services said Tuesday.

Another spokesperson for the emergencies services also said Tuesday the plane had sent a SOS signal at 15:37 Moscow time [11.37 GMT] and vanished from the screens two minutes later. The St. Petersburg-based airline said the crew had sent four mayday signals before contact was lost, three at 38,600 feet (11,700 meters) and one two minutes later at 10,000 ft (3,000 meters)

Russian rescuers, including 30 top experts, arrived at the site at about 2 a.m. local time (11 p.m. GMT), a RIA Novosti correspondent said. Television pictures showed little more than a huge area of charred grass in the remote area where the plane impacted and a few fragments of twisted metal.

The rescuers have brought special equipment to help the recovery effort and to search for the flight data recorders, said Yulia Stadnikova, spokesperson for the Russian Emergency Situations Ministry.

Tents have been put up in the area to receive relatives of the victims who are expected to leave St. Petersburg for Donetsk, about 45 kilometers (30 miles) south of the site, at 12:00 Moscow time (8:00 a.m. GMT), the ministry press service said.

Entire families are thought to have been lost in the tragedy. A spokesman for the Leningrad Region, which surrounds St. Petersburg, said Wednesday morning that 32 residents of the region had been killed, including three married couples, five families of three and one of four people.

Many of those who were lost are believed to have been returning from their summer vacations in one of Russia's most popular resorts.

Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko offered his condolences to Russia Tuesday night and Wednesday and Thursday have been declared days of mourning in Ukraine and Russia respectively.

Although the Soviet-designed Tu-154 is known as a robust aircraft, Tuesday's tragedy was not the first in recent years.

In October 2001, Siberia Airline (now S-7) Tu-154 en route from Tel Aviv to Novosibirsk in Siberia was accidentally shot down by a Ukrainian S-200 missile, killing 78 people onboard.

In July 2001, another Tu-154 crashed near Irkutsk, claiming the lives of 145 people.

The loss in Ukraine was also the third major aircraft crash to have affected Russia this summer.

On July 9, an A-310 airbus owned by S-7 Airline crashed killing 124 people on the way from Moscow to Irkutsk, the home airport for popular tourist destination Lake Baikal in Siberia. It veered off the runway upon landing and caught fire after hitting a concrete wall and plowing into garages.

On May 3, another Airbus operated by Armenian carrier Armavia crashed as it was preparing to land at the airport of Adler, off Russia's Black Sea coast. All 113 passengers and crew died.

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