Passenger jet crashes shortly after takeoff in Kazakhstan, killing at least 12 - The Washington Post

At least 12 people were killed and more than twenty hospitalized after a plane operated by a local airline crashed in Kazakhstan on Dec. 27.

MOSCOW — A passenger plane with 98 people on board crashed shortly after takeoff near Almaty airport in Kazakhstan on Friday, killing 12 people and injuring dozens of others.

The Bek Air jet, a Fokker 100, struck a concrete barrier before crashing into a two-story building, Kazakhstan’s Civil Aviation Committee said in a statement. All Bek Air flights and Fokker 100 aircraft in Kazakhstan were suspended from operations pending an investigation.

The flight took off at 7:22 a.m. local time, bound for Kazakhstan’s capital, Nur-Sultan. There was no fire at the crash site.

Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev expressed condolences on Twitter to the victims’ families and friends, adding that a government commission has been created to investigate the crash.

“All those guilty will be severely punished in accordance with the law,” he wrote.

Forty-nine people were hospitalized, 18 of them in critical condition, according to Kazakhstan’s Ministry of Internal Affairs. Among the dead are the captain of the aircraft, Marat Muratabaev, and Kazakh journalist Dana Kruglova, of informburo.kz, the ministry said.

Vladimir Tretyakov

AP

Police stand guard as rescuers assist at the site of a Bek Air crash near Almaty International Airport in Kazakhstan on Friday.

Kazakh Deputy Prime Minister Roman Sklyar said at a news conference that eight of the 12 deaths occurred at the scene. Sklyar said pilot error and technical malfunctions are considered preliminary causes of the crash, according to Russia’s Tass state news agency. The aircraft’s tail touched the runway twice as the flight took off, he said.

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Bek Air is a low-cost regional carrier based in Kazakhstan. Friday’s crash appeared to be the first for the airline, although not for the aircraft type. In July, a Virgin Australia Fokker 100 suffered engine failure after takeoff, and the crew was unable to restart the left engine. The plane landed safely with no injuries.

Another Fokker 100 flying from Germany to France experienced engine failure upon takeoff a year ago and landed safely back in Hamburg just 33 minutes after it had departed. Production of the aircraft was halted in 1997 after the Dutch manufacturer went bankrupt.

The Fokker 100 that crashed Friday was 23 years old, and Kazakhstan’s Civil Aviation Committee said a certificate of the plane’s airworthiness had been issued in May. Bek Air has 10 of the jets in its fleet, nine of which were in use.

The committee said the airline canceled 100 flights Thursday through Dec. 31, affecting more than 9,000 passengers who are now awaiting refunds.

One woman who posted video from the crash site said emergency services took 20 minutes to arrive. In another video, people standing beside the downed plane screamed for an ambulance in the background as a woman said, “People are asking for the ambulance, but they’re not coming.”

The Civil Aviation Committee said 40 ambulance crews went to the crash site to provide medical assistance. A video uploaded to Instagram showed one emergency service worker running through the snow, carrying a baby to nearby ambulances.

Friday’s disaster was the first major commercial airline crash in Kazakhstan since 2013, when a SCAT Airlines regional jet went down outside Almaty, killing all 21 people on board. The country has declared Saturday a day of mourning, and Kazakh news sites have switched to black and white in solidarity.

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