41 people, including at least two children, were killed when a Russian passenger plane made a emergency landing and was engulfed in flames at Moscow's busiest airport yesterday.
Footage shared on social media showed Aeroflot's Sukhoi Superjet 100 aircraft land at Sheremetyevo international airport with flames and black smoke pouring from its fuselage.
Passengers could be seen leaping onto an inflatable slide at the front and running from the blazing plane as huge black columns of smoke billowed into the sky.
"There were 78 people including crew members on board the plane," the Investigative Committee said in a statement, adding it had headed to the northwest Russian city of Murmansk.
"According to the updated info which the investigation has, 37 people survived."
Another 11 people were injured, Dmitry Matveyev, the Moscow region's health minister said yesterday.
Three of them had been hospitalised but they were not in a serious condition, he added.
The jet left Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport at 6pm local time and the crew issued a distress signal shortly afterwards, officials said.
"After the take-off, the crew reported an anomaly and decided to come back to the departure airport. At 6.30pm, the aircraft made an emergency landing," the airport said in a statement.
Aeroflot, Russia's flagship carrier, said the plane had to return to the airport "due to a technical reason" and its engines caught fire upon landing. Previous reports had said the fire broke out in mid-air.
The jet reportedly managed to land on its second attempt, hitting the ground with its landing gear first and then its nose.
Flight tracking site Flightradar24 showed the jet looping once in the air before landing.
The plane's fuel tanks were full and a much bigger death toll could have been a real possibility, aviation experts said.
Witness Alyona Osokina said she was inside the terminal when she suddenly saw a plane on fire rushing along the runway.
"The blaze was devouring the plane," she told Rain TV, adding that the fire brigades arrived quickly but could not immediately put out the blaze.
"This horror and tragedy happened before our eyes," she said.
Investigators said they were looking into various lines of inquiry and it was premature to draw any conclusions about the cause of the accident.
Russian President Vladimir Putin offered his condolences to the victims' loved ones and said the investigation "should be as thorough as possible", according to the Kremlin.
Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev ordered a special committee to investigate the disaster.
Many of the victims were from the Murmansk region, which has declared three days of mourning.
Some flights were diverted to other Moscow airports or Nizhny Novgorod, some 400km east of the Russian capital.
Numerous Aeroflot flights are expected to be affected in the coming days.
The Sukhoi Superjet-100 was the first civilian aircraft developed in Russia's post-Soviet era and, at the time of its launch in 2011, was a source of national pride.
But it struggled to convince buyers from airlines outside Russia, and several foreign carriers that did buy it have since preferred to cut back its use or phase it out completely, citing its reliability.
The Russian government offered subsidies to encourage Russian airlines to buy the Superjet and Aeroflot became its main operator.
In September 2018, it announced a record order of 100 Superjet-100s.
