A Soviet-built plane (Yak 42) carrying a top ice hockey team has crashed earlier today, killing all the members of Lokomotiv Yaroslavl and most of the plane’s crew.
Out of the 45 people on board, 43 died during the crash, one survived the crash but died later in the hospital, and only one flight engineer is still alive, although his condition is critical.
I’m not big into sports and I’ve watched hockey games only a couple of times, but this plane crash is incredibly sad stuff. It would have been sad even if the passengers were just regular people, but the world has lost world-class sportsmen in this tragedy. You can’t replace that kind of talent.
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has announced plans to take the aging Yak 42 planes out of service starting next year, but as usual that sort of measure is only taken following a tragedy, at which point it’s sort of a “let’s prevent this from happening again; maybe” kind of thing.
May they rest in peace.
