SOCHI, Russia (AP) - The Latest on the crash of a Russian military plane in the Black Sea (all times local):
7:25 p.m.
Russia’s top investigative agency says it has located a man who filmed a Russian military plane as it crashed in the Black Sea.
The Investigative Committee said Tuesday that it has found several witnesses of Sunday’s crash of the Tu-154 plane, including a man who filmed the jet’s brief flight and its crash. It didn’t identify the man.
The committee didn’t indicate if the images the man caught were photographs or video or movie footage.
The plane belonging to the Defense Ministry and bound for a Russian military base in Syria fell into the sea two minutes after taking off from Sochi.
Investigators are looking into pilot error, equipment failure, bad fuel and alien objects stuck in the engines as possible causes of the crash that killed all 92 people on board.
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7:10 p.m.
Russia’s top investigative agency says it has taken samples from a tank used to fuel the Russian military plane that crashed in the Black Sea.
The Investigative Committee said Tuesday that the fuel samples are now being analyzed. Investigators have been looking into the possibility that Sunday’s crash of the Tu-154 plane that fell into the Black Sea two minutes after taking off from Sochi was caused by bad fuel.
Investigators also are exploring possible pilot error, equipment failure or alien objects stuck in the engines as possible causes of the crash that killed all 92 people on board, including 64 members of the Alexandrov Ensemble.
The world famous military choir was heading to a New Year’s concert at a Russian military base in Syria.
3:50 p.m.
Russia’s transport minister says investigators have begun to study one of the flight recorders from the plane that crashed into the Black Sea but says it’s still “too early to speak” about what caused the crash.
All 92 people onboard the Russian military Tu-154 plane are believed to have died in Sunday’s crash shortly after takeoff from the southern Russian city of Sochi.
Rescue workers early Tuesday found one of the flight recorders on the sea bed about a mile away from the shore.
Transport Minister Maxim Sokolov told Russian news agencies later Tuesday that the investigators studying one of the flight recorders have no information yet pointing to one just one theory about the cause.
Sokolov repeated, however, that Russian authorities have no information that would make them to believe it might have been a terror attack and they saw no possible security breach at Sochi’s Adler airport.
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2:10 p.m.
Russia’s defense ministry says a flight recorder of the Russian jet that crashed into the Black Sea on Sunday has not been seriously damaged.
Rescue workers early on Tuesday found one of the flight recorders on the sea bed about a mile away from the shore. All 92 people aboard the Syria-bound plane are believed to have died when it crashed two minutes after taking off from the southern Russian city of Sochi on Sunday.
The defense ministry said in a statement on Tuesday that the flight recorder, which has been flown to a ministry lab outside Moscow, did not sustain considerable damage. The ministry says experts will need to clean the black box in distilled water before they begin to retrieve data from it.
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12:45 p.m.
A decorated Russian test pilot says investigators could retrieve data from the flight recorder found at the scene of Sunday’s plane crash later on Tuesday.
Magomed Tolboyev told the Interfax news agency that investigators could retrieve the first data from the Russian military’s Tu-154 by the end of the day.
All 92 people aboard the plane are believed to have died Sunday morning when it crashed two minutes after taking off from the southern Russian city of Sochi.
The defense ministry said earlier on Tuesday that rescue workers found one of the black boxes in the Black Sea hours before dawn and that it has been flown to Moscow for immediate inspection.
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9:45 a.m.
Russia’s defense ministry says rescue teams have found a flight recorder from the plane that crashed into the Black Sea over the weekend.
The ministry said in a statement that the flight recorder was found a mile from the shore early Tuesday morning. State television showed footage of rescue workers on an inflatable boat carrying a container with a bright orange object covered in water.
All 92 people aboard the Russian military’s Tu-154 plane are believed to have died Sunday morning when it crashed two minutes after taking off from the southern Russian city of Sochi.
The 84 passengers included dozens of singers from Russia’s world-famous military choir who were going to Russia’s base in Syria to perform at a New Year’s concert.
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