Plane Crash Kills Top Russian Hockey Team
By ANDREW E. KRAMER
September 7, 2011

MOSCOW — A passenger airplane that had been chartered by one of Russia’s best-known hockey teams crashed during take-off Wednesday, killing much of the team, including many of its star players, in the latest air disaster here this summer.

The Yak-42 jet was carrying the team, called Lokomotiv, from its home in Yaroslavl, a city northeast of Moscow, to an away game in Minsk, the capital of Belarus.

The initial accounts of the number of people on board varied from 37 to 44. A Russian aviation official told the Interfax news agency that all but one — a member of the crew — had died.

The list of victims was not immediately published, but a spokesman for Lokomotiv said the starting lineup and many of the top players had died.

“We have no team any more,” Vladimir N. Malkov, the spokesman, said in a telephone interview. “All our starting players, and all the service people, they all burned in the crash.”

The plane was one of the vintage, Soviet-designed needle-nosed aircraft that have been the focus of safety concerns after a series of problems and crashes, including one in June that killed most of the 52 passengers on board.

The plane that crashed Wednesday came down about 500 yards from the runway shortly after 4 p.m., the Russia Today television news channel reported.

Lokomotiv is a three-time champion in Russia’s Continental Hockey League, the equivalent here of the N.H.L. The team’s roster includes Czech, Swedish, Ukrainian, Latvian and Belarusian hockey players.

The plane was operated by YAK Service, a charter carrier founded in 1993 that flies five Yakovlev aircraft, including three Yak-40 and two Yak-42 models. In 2009, Russian regulators restricted the carrier’s operations for nearly three months after finding major safety deficiencies, according to the Aviation Safety Network, which maintains a database of air accidents and incidents. In 2010, the European Union barred two of YAK Services Yak-40 planes from flying into the 27-nation bloc after Russian regulators failed to provide evidence that all of the airline’s planes were fitted with mandatory safety equipment.

The Yak-42 is a three-engine, 120-seat jet that first entered service in 1975. There are currently about 90 of the planes in service, most of which are operated by Russian airlines, though several are operated by abroad in countries like Cuba, Iran, Armenia, Tatarstan and Kazakhstan. The model has suffered a total of eight crashes involving 570 fatalities.

According to Russia’s Interstate Aviation Committee, the plane involved in Wednesday’s crash had the tail number RA-42433, a Yax-42D, the most recent build of the plane, which ceased production in 1999.

So far, 2011 has been a terrible year for air safety in Russia, with eight crashes that have killed 120 people. Six of those crashes have occurred since June.

Nicola Clark contributed reporting from Paris.