MOSCOW • Russian investigators looking into the fiery crash landing of an Aeroflot jet in Moscow that killed at least 40 people, in full view of hundreds at the country's main airport, were focusing on pilot error, equipment failure and bad weather as possible causes, The New York Times reported.
After the plane skidded to a stop on Sunday at Sheremetyevo International Airport, Russian news media reported that some passengers had insisted on grabbing their carry-on bags before leaving the burning wreckage - a violation of basic emergency protocol that would have slowed the evacuation.
Videos posted online showed people walking away from the jet with luggage. Local reports said that most of those who died had been sitting in the rear of the plane.
The Aeroflot flight took off from Moscow on Sunday evening bound for Murmansk, a port city in northern Russia.
Pilots signalled distress soon after take-off, the news agency Interfax reported, and the plane circled back for an emergency landing.
Officials said on Monday that both flight data recorders had been retrieved, and local news outlets reported that the Investigative Committee of Russia, a law enforcement agency, was looking at the inexperience of the pilots, along with mechanical or weather-related problems, as possible contributing factors.
Flightradar24, a site that tracks transponders on planes, showed the aircraft, a Sukhoi Superjet, flying in a loop around the airport before returning. The jet bounced on touchdown and then came down again, hard, and burst into flames.
Russian Health Minister Veronika Skvortsova said on Monday that 40 people had died. Officials had said late on Sunday that there were 41 victims.
On Monday, Interfax cited an unidentified official as saying that investigators believed lightning had struck the plane. "At an altitude of about 2,000m, the crew signalled an emergency because of a lightning strike and the failure of the radio and other electronics."
Lightning strikes airliners thousands of times a year, but modern planes are designed to withstand it.
A website posting weather information showed a thunderstorm about 24km north of the Sheremetyevo airport as the jet flew in that area at the time.
Interfax said the pilots then landed with full fuel tanks because they could not coordinate with the tower to "manoeuvre to discard" the jet fuel.
Using a transponder to send coded signals, the pilots first indicated that their radio had failed - a problem, though not usually a severe one - and then, just four minutes before landing, communicated that they had an emergency on board, the radio station Echo of Moscow reported.
Russia's Minister of Transport Yevgeny Ditrikh said he saw no reason yet to ground the Superjet, the main domestically produced passenger airliner.
As the scale of the disaster emerged, many Russians reacted with outrage at the initial reports on state media and a statement from the airline that had suggested that all aboard had survived the jet fuel inferno.
Aeroflot had issued a statement before the authorities announced the death toll praising its crew for a swift evacuation.
"The evacuation was carried out in 55 seconds while the industry norm is 90 seconds," the statement read. "The commander of the aircraft was the last to abandon the burning machine."
Singapore's Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Monday expressed its condolences to the families of those who perished and wished the injured a speedy recovery. It said there have been no reports of any Singaporeans on board so far.
