Russians examine air crash data

Survivors said the rescue efforts were slow

Officials in Moscow have begun examining the flight data recorders of a passenger plane which crashed in central Russia, killing six.

The Tu-134 jet broke up while landing in thick fog in the city of Samara, some 900km (550 miles) south-east of Moscow, on Saturday.

There were 50 passengers and seven crew on board the plane, 28 of whom were injured in the accident, six seriously.

The plane was on an internal flight from the Siberian city of Surgut.

Regional prosecutor Alexei Kopylov told NTV television that pilot error and bad weather were regarded as the primary causes of the crash.

The aircraft's operator, YUTair, said the plane was in good condition and was flown by an experienced pilot.

It said a possible reason for the crash was a sudden deterioration in weather conditions at the airport in Samara.

Russian Deputy Transport Minister Boris Korol said preliminary results of the inquiry into the causes of the crash would be known in a few days.

Rescue effort criticised

Survivors told Russian newspapers that passengers and crew had to rescue themselves from the wreckage because airport emergency services were slow to reach the crash scene.

The plane reportedly landed 400 metres short of the runway.

"The rescuers took 20 minutes to get to us. I know it was foggy but we were right there on the runway," Vadim Titlov told Komsomolskaya Pravda.

"We dragged our neighbours out (of the plane). We went through the cabin looking for a knife to cut the seatbelts."

He said passengers used their hands to heap snow onto a fire that broke out at the spot where the port wing had broken away from the fuselage.

"We did everything ourselves," said another passenger, Andrei Beglitsin.

"We put out the fire as best we could, and we rescued people from the plane."

Survivor Anatoly Ogurechnikov said he saw the plane's outside covering ablaze but there was no fire inside.

"After the fuselage broke up I was left hanging upside down, strapped in. I was saved only by the fact that I had tightened my seatbelt before landing," he said.

Tu-134s are widely used in Russia and other former Soviet republics.

The last major crash of a Russian airliner was last August, when a Tu-154 crashed in Ukraine, killing all 170 people aboard.

Investigators later concluded that pilot error was to blame.