after seeing the soviet model planes while i was in kazakhstan, i was not surprised to hear about this crash. it was SCAT airlines too, the airline i flew the most during my eight months in kaz. unlike the shiny european planes of air astana, the national carrier, SCAT was the only airline that served taraz (where we lived) and featured a particularly run down fleet of soviet cast-off planes.
and yet, today's crash did not involve a tupolev or yak (the aircraft models we rode on our SCAT flights), it was a canadian-made bombardier CRJ200, a model i've flown right here in the u.s.
last summer, kazakhstan announced that it was phasing out soviet era planes and would ban them from its skies by november 2012. i never heard if they managed to meet that deadline, but that might be why SCAT was flying a bombardier in that flight (some of my contacts on facebook have posted that when they flew the kokshetau to almaty route with SCAT, the plane was a yak). if the cause of this crash turns out to be mechanical failure it would add a sad irony to the whole tragedy.
and yet, today's crash did not involve a tupolev or yak (the aircraft models we rode on our SCAT flights), it was a canadian-made bombardier CRJ200, a model i've flown right here in the u.s.
last summer, kazakhstan announced that it was phasing out soviet era planes and would ban them from its skies by november 2012. i never heard if they managed to meet that deadline, but that might be why SCAT was flying a bombardier in that flight (some of my contacts on facebook have posted that when they flew the kokshetau to almaty route with SCAT, the plane was a yak). if the cause of this crash turns out to be mechanical failure it would add a sad irony to the whole tragedy.
