- The recent crash of a Vladivostok Avia plane in Siberia,
which killed all 145 onboard, might have occurred because of an earthquake
in Chile, according to one theory.
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- Seismologists familiar with the issue and speaking on
condition of anonymity said that alarm signals in the doomed plane went
off 17 seconds after the quake.
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- The Chilean quake happened at a point on the globe exactly
opposite the city of Irkutsk, near which the plane went into a deadly spin,
the seismologists said. A shock wave of energy could have traveled directly
through the center of the earth from Chile to Irkutsk and out of a tectonic
fault line under the area.
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- It possibly disrupted local electric, magnetic and gravitational
fields, causing a malfunction of the plane's navigational devices. Resulting
faulty indications on the instrument panel might have been the reason why
the plane took an inexplicable and fatal turn.
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- The Tu-154 passenger jet jerked up its nose while making
circles in the air to approach the airport located amid hills. The sudden
rise at a low speed sent it into a wild flat spin, throwing the crew and
passengers from one side to another before the jet slammed into a meadow
seconds later.
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- A government commission headed by Deputy Premier Ilya
Klebanov blamed the July 3 plane crash on the co-pilot who, the commission
said, was at the controls at the time.
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- But flight recordings published in the national Komsomolskaya
Pravda newspaper on July 13 indicated that the jet was flying on automatic
pilot. The recorder first registered the sound of the siren warning of
a dangerous turn and 1.7 seconds later it recorded the signal indicating
the automatic pilot's emergency shutdown.
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- Officials have yet to provide comment on the publication,
but the autopilot's controls are more likely to have automatically reacted
to the presumed sudden fluctuations in instrument readings.
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- The earthquake link was also considered in a 1995 plane
crash near the Far East city of Khabarovsk.
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- Two mild tremors in the area happened one or two minutes
before a similar Tu-154 jet plunged into a harrowing spin. From a height
of 10 kilometers it made impact with the ground in less than a minute,
killing all 99 onboard.
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- A government commission investigating that accident didn't
reach a definitive conclusion because flight recorders were unworkably
damaged in the crash. It cited several most plausible reasons which included
a malfunction of the automatic pilot as a result of the earthquakes.
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- The shocks produced a powerful magnetic disturbance that
could have affected the jet's avionics, the commission said. After the
tremors, the plane, which had already been flying at a tilt of four to
10 degrees, sharply inclined to 20 degrees and then spun down.
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- http://vd.vladnews.ru/2001/0007/Current/TXT/TXT01.ASP
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