Russia probes out-of-control “dancing jet” (VIDEO)
MOSCOW, RUSSIA: picture shows a Tupolev-154 (TU-154) aircraft. A Russian TU-154 ‘Dalavia’ aircraft with 143 people on board has dropped out of contact and crashed in southern Siberia, 34 km to the east from Irkutsk at 17.10 (GMT), 03 July 2001.
Russian military prosecutors have launched an investigation after a YouTube video showed a defense ministry jet wobbling precariously in the sky, a condition known as a “Dutch roll,” as it came in to land near Moscow.
In the amateur video posted on YouTube, the Russian-made Tupolev Tu-154 jet appears drunk as it lurches through the sky before safely landing at a military airfield.
Bloggers have dubbed it the “dancing plane,” AFP reports, and the video has been watched more than 400,000 times since being posted on April 30.
“The military prosecutors have launched a probe which should establish the reasons for the mid-air incident that almost led to an aviation disaster,” a spokesman for the chief military prosecutor's office told the RIA Novosti news agency.
The spokesman said that the plane’s steering system had broken down on a test flight, and praised the pilots for managing to land the plane safely.
"Thanks to the great professionalism and supreme skill of the pilots, the crew managed to land on the second attempt at Chkalovsk aerodrome, avoiding casualties among the airforce and the local population," the spokesman told RIA Novosti.
Russia’s aging fleet of Tupolev planes dates back to the 1960s and have been involved in a number of air crashes in recent years.
On April 10, 2010, a Tupolev-154 carrying Polish president Lech Kaczynski and dozens of other top officials came down in fog near the Russian city of Smolensk. The one-year anniversary of the plane crash was marked just last month amid continuing complaints by Poland regarding Russia’s investigation into the disaster.
In September, a Tu-154 made an emergency landing on an airstrip in the remote Komi region, in northwestern Russia, after its electrical systems failed, AFP reports.
Tupolev planes, once known as the workhorses of the Soviet skies, were used by national air carrier Aeroflot until 2009, RIA Novosti reports.
About 1,000 were built, and some are still used in Russia and in other countries with former Soviet connections, such as North Korea.
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