A plane carrying the chief of staff of the Russian navy and other officers caught fire after crash-landing at Simferopol airfield in Crimea, Ukraine, Interfax news agency said on Monday.
It was the fourth serious aviation incident involving Russian passenger planes in 36 hours, one of which killed more than 130 people.
The others included two emergency landings — one also at Simferopol and the other in the Russian Siberian city of Irkutsk, both earlier on Monday, and a major airliner crash at Irkutsk on Sunday.
No fatalities were immediately reported in the latest accident in Ukraine and the Russian navy Chief of Staff, Admiral Vladimir Masorin, was unhurt, Interfax said.
Several officers with him received burns of varying degrees in the accident, the report said, quoting an unnamed source with the Russian Black Sea Fleet.
Navy spokesperson Captain Igor Dygalo confirmed the accident but made no mention of Masorin’s presence on board.
”The crew and a group of officers who were aboard left the aircraft in an orderly manner,” he said. ”Three people were hospitalised, though their lives are not in danger.”
The navy said one possible cause of the crash was a bird being sucked into one of the two engines of the Tupolev 134 as it took off from Simferopol, causing it to stop.
The plane made an emergency landing at the same airport, the naval statement added. ”Because of its high speed the aircraft left the runway and disintegrated,” it said, without mentioning a fire.
Interfax said the accident occurred at the Gvardeiskoye airport near Simferopol after Masorin and the delegation accompanying him had taken part in naval exercises at the Black Sea fleet base of Sevastopol.
Earlier on Monday a Tu-154 with 130 passengers and nine crew members requested to make an emergency landing at Irkutsk airport just 20 minutes after taking off from there, after detecting a problem with one of the three engines, news agencies reported.
Also on Monday, a Russia-operated Airbus A310 on a flight between Antalya in Turkey and Moscow made an emergency landing in Simferopol after the crew detected a drop in oil pressure in one of the two engines, Russian news agencies reported.
About 130 people died on Sunday when another Airbus A310 crashed on landing at Irkutsk airport after failing to slow down, careening off the end of the runway into a building and bursting into flames.
The flight voice and date recorders from that plane were flown back to Moscow on Monday for analysis and Russian investigators were being assisted by six experts from Airbus. — Sapa-AFP