MOSCOW: Russian officials hailed a “miracle” on Friday after a passenger plane made an emergency landing in a Siberian field and all 18 people on board emerged, suffering only cuts and bruises.
The An-28 plane, operated by Siberian Light Aviation (SiLA), was flying from the town of Kedrovy to Tomsk when communication was lost, Governor Sergei Zhvachkin’s office said.
The emergencies ministry announced later that the plane had been found, apparently after making a “hard landing,” and that survivors had been spotted.
The aviation agency said the plane had been found 155 kilometers (96 miles) from the airstrip in Tomsk.
Zhvachkin’s office announced that everyone on board, including three crew, were alive and that medics had “recorded mainly bruises and abrasions.”
“We all believed in a miracle. And thanks to the professionalism of the pilots, it came true: everyone is alive,” the governor said.
Images circling on social media showed the plane flipped upside down with dirt inside the cabin and its nose destroyed.
Zhvachkin said that all of the passengers and crew would be taken to the regional capital Tomsk, where they would be examined by doctors.
The Interfax news agency cited a local official as saying that six passengers refused to take a helicopter from the crash site to Tomsk and would be traveling instead by minibus.
The incident comes just 10 days after the crash of an An-26 plane in Russia’s far eastern Kamchatka peninsula, killing all 28 people on board.
Antonov planes were manufactured during the Soviet era and are still used throughout the former USSR for civilian and military transport. They have been involved in a number of accidents in recent years.
News agency TASS reported that the An-28 plane had passed all safety checks but cited a SiLA executive as saying that the flight had been delayed by 10 hours because of bad weather.
The An-28 is a twin-engine light turboprop plane with a usual capacity of 17 passengers.
A local transport source told the Interfax news agency that the plane was built in 1989 and used by Russian airline Aeroflot and in ex-Soviet Kyrgyzstan before going into service with SiLA in 2014.
Russia, once notorious for plane accidents, has improved its air traffic safety record in recent years.
But poor aircraft maintenance and lax safety standards persist.
In May 2019 a Sukhoi Superjet belonging to the flag carrier airline Aeroflot crash-landed and caught fire on the runway of a Moscow airport, killing 41 people.
In February 2018, a Saratov Airlines An-148 aircraft crashed near Moscow shortly after take-off, killing all 71 people on board. An investigation later concluded that the accident was caused by human error.
Flying in Russia can also be dangerous in the vast country’s isolated regions with difficult weather conditions such as the Arctic and the Far East.
All 18 on missing Russian plane found alive in ‘miracle’
https://arab.news/9pcew
All 18 on missing Russian plane found alive in ‘miracle’
- Governor Sergei Zhvachkin: We all believed in a miracle. And thanks to the professionalism of the pilots, it came true: everyone is alive
- Six passengers refused to take a helicopter from the crash site to Tomsk and would be traveling instead by minibus
Israeli firm loses British Army contract bid
- Subsidiary Elbit Systems UK’s campaign for $2.6bn program was marred by controversy
- Senior govt civil servant overseeing contract was dined, handed free Israel tour
LONDON: A UK subsidiary of Israeli weapons giant Elbit Systems has lost its bid to win a prominent British Army contract, The Times reported.
The loss followed high-profile reporting on controversy surrounding Elbit Systems UK’s handling of the bid.
The subsidiary led one of two major arms consortiums attempting to secure the $2.6 billion bid to prepare British soldiers for war and overhaul army standards.
Rivaling Elbit, the other consortium led by Raytheon UK, a British subsidiary of the US defense giant, ultimately won the contract, a Ministry of Defence insider told The Times.
It had been decided following an intricate process that Raytheon was a “better candidate,” the source said.
Elbit Systems UK’s controversial handling of its contract campaign was revealed in reports by The Times.
A whistleblower had compiled a dossier surrounding the bid that was shown to the MoD last August, though the report was privately revealed to the ministry months earlier.
It alleged that Elbit UK had breached business appointment rules when Philip Kimber, a former British Army brigadier, had reportedly shared information with the firm after leaving the military.
Kimber attending critical meetings at the firm to discuss the training contract that he had once overseen at the ministry, the report alleged.
In one case, Kimber was present in an Elbit meeting and sitting out of view of a camera. He reportedly said he “should not be there,” according to the whistleblower’s report.
In response to a freedom of information request, the MoD later admitted that it had held the dossier for seven months without investigating its claims. Insiders at the ministry blamed the investigative delay on “administrative oversight.”
A month after being pushed on the allegations by The Times, a senior civil servant completed an “assurance review” in September and found that business appointment rules had not been breached.
Other allegations concerned lunches and dinners hosted by Elbit UK in which civil servants at the heart of the contract decision process were invited.
One senior civil servant was dined by the British subsidiary seven times, while rival Raytheon did not host events.
Mike Cooper, the senior responsible owner at army headquarters for the army training program, also traveled to Jerusalem with two senior British military officers.
He took part in a sightseeing tour funded by Elbit Systems, the British subsidiary’s parent company.
In response to the allegations, an MoD spokesperson said in a statement: “The collective training transformation programme will modernise training for soldiers to ensure the British Army can face down the threats of the future.
“We will not comment further until a preferred tenderer announcement is made public in due course.”
Amid mounting criticism of Israel within the British military establishment, four former senior army officers, in a letter to Prime Minister Keir Starmer, recently urged the government to end involvement with Israeli-owned or Israeli-supported weapons companies.
“Now is not the time to return to business as usual with the Israeli government,” they wrote, urging harsher sanctions.
