The jetliner that crashed in Russia's Far East went into a sudden spin at 35,000 feet and nose-dived into the ground, and officials said Tuesday the 97 people aboard had no chance to survive.
Rescue workers searching the snowy mountain crash site found one of the plane's two flight recorders, which could help investigators determine why the plane went out of control.The wreckage was discovered Monday, 11 days after the Russian plane crashed Dec. 7 in a region northeast of the city Khabarovsk. A crater 6 feet deep and 70 feet wide in the rocky mountainside and the shattered debris of the Tu-154 indicated the plane was almost vertical when it hit, the ITAR-Tass news agency said.
More than 50 rescue workers continued searching Tuesday for the remains of victims and for more plane fragments to aid the investigation.
Experts say they have not ruled out the possibility of an explosion on board the jet. But they say failure in the jet's equipment more likely caused the crash; the Tu-154 had been in service for 19 years and repaired four times.
Officials planned to fly some relatives of the victims to the crash site Wednesday, but rescuers have found almost no remains for them to identify - just an arm, some small bits of human tissue, a woman's boot, a scarf, a coat, a passport, and some money mixed with snow and ice.
A helicopter - not part of the rescue force - discovered the debris on Monday by chance. Authorities said rescue aircraft flew over the site four times but failed to spot the wreckage because of rocky terrain and bad weather.
The Tu-154, carrying 89 passengers and eight crew members, disappeared from radar screens while flying from Sakhalin Island, just north of Japan, to Khabarovsk, on the mainland. It crashed in the mountains 35 miles from the coast.
The jet belonged to Khabarovsk Airlines, a regional spinoff of Aeroflot.
The daily Segodnya quoted aviation experts as saying that only test pilots can sometimes get a big jet out of a spin; ordinary crew members usually panic and fail to react in the minute or two they have before the plane hits the ground.
A sudden spin also would explain why the Tu-154's crew failed to contact traffic controllers.