A commission from the Federal Air Transport Agency arrived in the Chelyabinsk region to find out the reasons for yesterday’s crash of a Su-24 front-line bomber in the Etkul region. The department’s specialists will work as part of the operational headquarters created for the investigation, the press service of the Federal Air Transport Agency told URA.Ru.

The Su-24 aircraft of military unit 69806 was carrying out a training flight before being scheduled to be sent to a repair plant in the Kurgan region; it was not carrying weapons or ammunition. At 14:54, the plane crashed 70 kilometers from Chelyabinsk between the villages of Lebedevka and Nikolaevka in the Etkul region. The message about the plane crash was received by the duty dispatcher of the Urals Air Navigation branch at approximately 14:56.

According to the preliminary cause, the crash occurred due to a failure of the control system caused by the failure of the nose radio-transparent fairing. After an unsuccessful attempt to make an emergency landing, the pilots decided to move the falling plane away from populated areas and ejected. They were picked up by a Mi-8 search and rescue helicopter taking off from the Uprun airport in the Uvelsky district. The plane was completely burned out and cannot be restored. The Russian Ministry of Defense has suspended flights of Su-24 bombers and their modifications until the causes and circumstances of yesterday's plane crash are clarified.

Upon the incident, the military investigative department of the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation opened a criminal case on the grounds of a crime under Article 351 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (“Violation of flight rules or preparation for them.” From the Shagol military airfield, from where the plane took off, as well as from the crash site of the bomber, samples of aviation fuel, from a military unit - official documentation. The officers who controlled the flight from the ground are being interrogated. Investigative actions with the aircraft crew, commander Andrei Zelentsov and navigator Vadim Fedikov, who managed to eject during the crash, will be carried out after the completion of the appropriate medical examination. Both pilots are being held in hospital.

This is the second emergency involving Su-24s stationed at the Shagol military airfield in Chelyabinsk. In February of this year, an aircraft crashed on the territory of the Kurgan region, at the controls of which were the former head of the Chelyabinsk airbase Nikolai Gostev and the head of the combat training department of military unit No. 69806, stationed at the Shagol airfield, Lieutenant Colonel Andrei Ermakov. The prosecutor's office named them as suspects in a criminal case under Article 351 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (“Violation of flight rules or preparation for them”). Gostev and Ermakov themselves do not consider themselves guilty.

A commission from the Federal Air Transport Agency arrived in Chelyabinsk to investigate the causes of the Su-24 crash. PHOTO from the scene of the plane crash