Passenger jet crashes shortly after takeoff in Kazakhstan, killing at least 12 - The Washington Post

At least 12 people were killed and more than twenty hospitalized after a plane operated by a local airline crashed in Kazakhstan on Dec. 27.

MOSCOW — A passenger plane with 98 people on board crashed shortly after takeoff near Almaty airport in Kazakhstan on Friday, killing 12 people and injuring dozens of others.

The Bek Air jet, a Fokker 100, hit a concrete barrier before crashing into a two-story building, Kazakhstan’s Civil Aviation Committee said in a statement. All Bek Air flights and Fokker 100 aircraft in Kazakhstan were suspended from operations pending an investigation.

The flight took off at 7:22 a.m. local time and was en route to Kazakhstan’s capital, Nur-Sultan. There was no fire at the crash site.

Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev expressed condolences to the victims on Twitter, adding that a government commission has been created to investigate the crash.

“All those guilty will be severely punished in accordance with the law,” he wrote.

Forty-nine people have been hospitalized, 18 of them in critical condition, according to Kazakhstan’s Ministry of Internal Affairs.Among the dead is the captain of the aircraft, Marat Muratabaev, and Kazakh journalist Dana Kruglova, of informburo.kz, the ministry said.

Vladimir Tretyakov

Police stand guard as rescuers assist on the site of a Bek Air crash near Almaty International Airport in Kazakhstan on Friday.

Kazakh Deputy Prime Minister Roman Sklyar told a news conference that eight of the 12 deaths occurred at the scene. Sklyar said pilot errors and technical malfunctions are considered as preliminary causes of the crash, according to Russia’s Tass state news agency. The aircraft’s tail touched the runway twice as it was taking off, he said.

Bek Air is a low-cost regional carrier based in Kazakhstan. Friday’s crash appeared to be the first for the airline, though not for the aircraft type. In July, a Virgin Australia Fokker 100 suffered engine failure after takeoff, and the crew unsuccessfully tried to restart the left engine. The plane was able to land safely with no injuries.

Another Fokker 100 flying from Germany to France experienced engine failure upon takeoff a year ago and landed safely back in Hamburg just 33 minutes after it had departed. Production of the aircraft stopped in 1997 after its Dutch manufacturer went bankrupt.

The Fokker 100 that crashed Friday was 23 years old, and Kazakhstan’s Civil Aviation Committee said a certificate of the plane’s airworthiness was issued in May. Bek Air has 10 of the jets in its fleet, nine of which were in use.

One woman who posted video from the crash site said emergency services took 20 minutes to arrive at the crash site. In another video, people standing beside the downed plane screamed for the ambulance in the background as a woman said, “People are asking for the ambulance, but they’re not coming.”

Kazakhstan’s Civil Aviation Committee said 40 ambulance crews went to the crash site to provide medical assistance.

This is the first major commercial airline crash in Kazakhstan since 2013, when a SCAT Airlines regional jet went down outside Almaty and killed all 21 people aboard.

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