Passengers who stopped to get their bags in a crashed Russian jet have been slammed for wasting crucial seconds.
Several people towards the front of the plane were seen throwing their bags down the emergency chute of the Aeroflot jet which burst into flames over the weekend.
Vital time was wasted as people went to get their belongings rather than head straight for the exits of the Sukhoi SSJ100’s fuselage.
Within seconds of touching down it was engulfed in flames as it bounced along the runway. Passenger Dmitry Khlebushkin was singled out by others because he also quickly demanded a refund so soon after the disaster that left 41 dead.
Aviation forum Forumavia said: ‘On the video we see the first passenger jumping out taking four seconds.
The second – 5 seconds.’ One comment stated: ‘The first passengers tried to throw out their bags from the cabin and then to slide down. This is why there are delays…’
Khlebushkin had praised the stewardesses for help in evacuating the plane. He said: ‘It was dark, the temperature was high, they were pulling people out of there.
They helped people to go down the slide.’ But then he told Life online news: ‘My second point – Aeroflot airline… It consists of heartless and unprofessional people.
‘I failed to get a refund for my ticket for 40 minutes. And in the end I did not get it at all.’ ForumAvia said: ‘That fat man from the video who was angry that he did not get a refund within 40 minutes – he surely took his bag from the overhead compartment despite all the other people – because he “paid”.
A day after Sunday’s disaster at Sheremetyevo airport, Russian news media quoted the pilot, Denis Evdokimov, as saying he followed procedures for landing with excess weight, but the crew reportedly did not dump any fuel, which is common for flights that have to land soon after take-off to prevent being too heavy.
The pilot said he was not certain why the plane landed hard. Survivor Marina Sitnikova said: ‘Everything happened right away, at lightning speed.
There was a strong blow – my eyes almost popped out – a second was a little quieter, a third, and then smoke, and it started to burn immediately.’
When the plane came to a halt, some of the people aboard plunged down inflatable slides deployed from the forward part of the plane.
Some of those who escaped were carrying luggage, raising concerns that grabbing their bags may have delayed an evacuation in which every second was critical. ‘I do not know what to say about people who ran out with bags.
God is their judge,’ survivor Mikhail Savchenko wrote on Facebook. Mr Evdokimov said the plane had lost radio communications because of a lightning strike, but it was not clear if that precipitated the emergency landing.
A flight attendant said there was a sharp flash soon after the Aeroflot flight took off, bound for the northern city of Murmansk.
Tatiana Kasatnika said in a video posted on YouTube: ‘We took off, got into a cloud, there was strong hail, and at that moment there was a pop and some kind of flash, like electricity.’
Russia’s main investigative agency said the plane’s data and voice flight recorders were recovered from the wreckage.
Agency spokeswoman Svetlana Petrenko was quoted by Russian news agencies as saying that investigators were looking into three main possibilities behind the cause of the disaster: inexperienced pilots, equipment failure and bad weather.
Storms were passing through the Moscow area when the plane landed. One survivor praised the plane’s attendants for helping save him and others.
Dmity Khlebnikov said: ‘It was dark and there was gas, very high temperature. They helped people out of there, helped them to descend.’
The SSJ100, known as the Superjet, was heralded when it came into service in 2011 as a new phase for Russia’s civil aviation industry. It was introduced as a replacement for outdated Soviet-designed aircraft.
But the plane has been troubled by concerns about defects in the horizontal stabilisers. Russia’s aviation authority in 2017 ordered inspection of all Superjets in the country because of the problems. Mexican airline Interjet grounded Superjets in December 2016 and later said it was phasing them out of the fleet.
Transportation minister Yevegny Dietrich said it was too early to decide whether to ground the planes in Russia, and Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the decision was not within President Vladimir Putin’s power.
