Posted on 08/24/2004 3:01:38 PM PDT by ConservativeMan55
Per Foxnews Alert. Into the red sea.
60 people aboard the first one.
I know what you mean. I have an uneasy sort of feeling also.
I got curious about Putin's family, so I tried to find out using google.
There is almost nothing about his kids except they are both girls, named Katarina and Maria. They must be late teens or so, since the Putins were married "in the 80's".
"accidently" veers hundreds of miles off course
Don't this this course change amount to "hundreds" of miles.
LOL! Like they say, even a blind hog can find a acorn once in a while.
COEX, somewhere back there you made the bold statement that eyewitnesses always see an explosion before a crash. You do need to give it a rest.
I seriously doubt that something the size of a Tu-154 (think a slightly larger Boeing 727) could fly a thousand miles undetected, transponder or no transponder. If I remember correctly, on 9/11 the aircraft were still being tracked on radar, but without the information that the transponder returns--the four-digit code identifying the flight, altitude, airspeed, etc.--all the controllers saw was a dot. They had to figure out the dot's speed by just watching it move, and they had no altitude information. It had to be a helpless feeling in those rooms, just watching the dot head for New York or Washington and powerless to do anything about it.
The only way the thing could possibly even evade radar would be to drop down to just a few hundred feet off the ground like an attack jet. The skill to take a 200,000-pound airliner, not built for fast low-level flying, and do that is beyond any hijacker.
If a Russian jetliner was hijacked in a fashion similar to 9/11, there is no doubt in my mind that it would be shot down, once found, if there was an inkling it was to be used in a suicide attack. The Moscow theater storming several years ago, along with so many of the actions in Chechnya, proved that the Russian authorities don't seem to have the same squeamishness about "collateral damage" that we do.
Just remember...I'm not an expert. I'm not a pilot, or an air traffic controller, I'm just a plane nut. And I didn't stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night.
}:-)4
Two Planes Crash in Russia
By Peter Baker and Susan B. Glasser
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, August 24, 2004; 8:08 PM
MOSCOW, Aug. 25 (Wednesday) -- Two passenger jets that took off from a Moscow airport crashed within minutes of each other in different parts of southern Russia late Tuesday night with a total of about 90 people on board, authorities said. No survivors were reported.
Both planes left Moscow's Domodedovo Airport about 10:30 p.m. heading to separate southern cities and then disappeared from radar almost simultaneously about 11 p.m., authorities said. Rescue squads reached the scene of one crash in the Tula region south of Moscow early Wednesday morning and hours later found a fire that may be from wreckage of the second plane north of Rostov-on-Don.
Officials made no immediate statements about the possible cause of the twin crashes, but the extraordinary timing raised suspicions of a possible terrorist attack. Witnesses in Tula reported seeing an explosion on one of the planes before it plunged out of the sky, the Interfax news agency reported, citing local authorities.
President Vladimir Putin, who is vacationing in the Black Sea resort of Sochi where the other plane was heading, was quickly informed of the developments and ordered the Federal Security Service, the domestic successor to the KGB, to investigate the incident, the Kremlin said. Security was tightened at Russian airports.
The crashes took place just days before an election this Sunday in the separatist region of Chechnya intended to choose a successor to Akhmad Kadyrov, the Kremlin-allied provincial president who was assassinated in May. The approaching vote has already been marked by renewed fighting in the Chechen capital of Grozny, as well as elsewhere in the region.
Russia has been targeted by repeated terrorist strikes in the past two years, killing hundreds of civilians in Moscow and in southern Russia. Chechen guerrillas have claimed credit for many of the suicide bombings and other attacks.
"There's still a chance this is an appalling airplane maintenance problem, but it seems more likely this is a terrorist act, given the prevailing conditions in the region," said Fiona Hill, a Russia scholar at the Brookings Institution in Washington. "The whole of the North Caucasus is in considerable disarray."
Although Russian government officials have sought repeatedly in recent years to link Chechen separatist guerrillas with international terrorist groups such as al Qaeda, Hill said the possible airplane-based attack was not necessarily an indication of cooperation. "There's a situation where you have a demonstration effect -- what works in one place people adapt in another," she said. The fact that Putin is currently on vacation in Sochi, destination for one of the crashed planes, was "very symbolic, obviously," she added.
Aslan Maskhadov, the Chechen separatist leader, said in June that the Chechens planned an escalation in attacks against the Russians. "We're planning a change in our tactics," he said at the time. "From now on we'll be launching big attacks."
Maskhadov seemed to foreshadow the use of airplanes in a separate e-mail to the Reuters news agency last month. "If Chechens possessed warplanes or rockets, then airstrikes on Russian cities would also be legitimate," he said.
Authorities and activists had anticipated a major terrorist attack leading up to the Sunday election, in which the regional interior minister Alu Alkhanov is expected to win with the support of the Kremlin.
In an interview Tuesday before the plane crashes, Tatyana Lokshina of the Moscow Helsinki Group, a human rights organization, said the fighting in Grozny last weekend might be "some kind of prelude to some bigger event that would take place" on or before the election. "In the last few months, the level of violence has been steadily rising."
Terrorist attacks in the past year have focused on soft targets such as the Moscow subway and a rock concert. Security for domestic flights at Russian airport has often been criticized as lax.
Flight 1303, a Tu-134 operated by Volga-Avia-Express airline, arrived at Moscow at 9:20 p.m. from the southern city of Volgograd, known as Stalingrad during World War II, then loaded new passengers and took off again at 10:32 p.m., according to Russian news reports.
It disappeared at 10:56 p.m. with 34 passengers and eight crew members aboard. Authorities found wreckage from the plane in Tula.
Flight 1047, a Tu-154 operated by Sibir airline, left Moscow at 10:35 p.m. heading for Sochi, then vanished from Russian radar at 10:59 p.m., according to news reports. Interfax reported that 38 passengers and eight crew members were aboard, while the RIA-Novosti news agency put the number of passengers at 44.
Four hours after the crash, rescue personnel were still searching for the remains of the aircraft about 82 miles from Rostov-on-Don. About 3 a.m. they found a fire they believed could indicate the scene of the crash.
Who is that?
A thread about close to a hundred fatalities is not a good place for dry, sarcastic humor.
Jennie Finch. You can't hit her. No one can.
Carl! That you!?!
Marking for home.
It seems the flying time on both planes was identical. New theory: Bombs with mercury switches and a timer attached to the landing gear.
Late!
And heading to Athens to dive-bomb there at 3 AM? Naaaaaaa a'int biting on that one.
what if they both had a bad batch of Lukos air fuel?
I am curious how it could be identical? The one plane got close to the coast? That would take more than 30 minutes flying time, it would seem, from Moscow. The other only made it 100km or so.
Engine failure due to bad fuel would give ample time for a distress call.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.