Israeli pilot reports missile flash:
July 5 — The pilot of an El Al Israel Airlines flight from Tel Aviv to Moscow reported seeing a surface-to-air missile explosion as he flew over Ukraine on Thursday, Israel’s transport minister said on Friday. The Ukrainian Defense Ministry said Ukraine had not conducted any missile launches since accidentally downing a Russian airliner on a flight last October from Tel Aviv to Novosibirsk in Siberia, killing 78 passengers and crew.
ISRAELI TRANSPORT Minister Ephraim Sneh said the Israeli plane was never in danger and voiced doubt it had come under attack.
Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma, quoted by Interfax Ukraine in Copenhagen, where he is attending an EU meeting, called the suggestion that the incident involved a Ukrainian missile “absurd.”
Sneh said he had spoken at length with the El Al pilot, whom he described as an experienced combat veteran of the Israeli air force.
“There is no doubt that he saw a missile that exploded in the air, apparently far from the plane,” Sneh told Israeli Army Radio. “Circumstances suggest it was not launched at the El Al plane.”
An Israeli source told NBC News that the pilot and passengers could clearly see a missile and flash.
The source, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that the area is one of Ukraine’s largest military grounds, where surface to air missiles are known to be fired.
Reports of the purported missile launch followed an attack at an El Al counter at Los Angeles airport in which an Egyptian gunman killed two people before security guards shot him dead.
Konstantin Khyvrenko, a Ukrainian Defense Ministry spokesman, said the reported sighting “could be anything —something from the natural world, like a sudden change of temperature (or) lightning strike.”
‘BRIGHT LIGHT’
Interfax Ukraine quoted an unidentified source in the Transport Ministry Department for Aviation as saying a Ukrainian pilot had reported seeing a bright light in the sky above Dnipropetrovsk, a town in eastern Ukraine on Thursday night.
The pilot was flying a Tupolev 154 from the Black Sea port of Odessa to Yekaterinburg in Russia’s Ural Mountains when he radioed in the sighting to Ukrainian controllers.
Ukrainian controllers declined to confirm the report.
Amos Shapira, El Al’s managing director, told Army Radio: “The (El Al) pilot saw a flash…It was at least 10 to 100 miles away. The plane was in no danger.”
Israel Radio said Israeli security authorities had asked the United States for any satellite data indicating a missile had been launched over Ukraine on Thursday
——-
Ukrainiens better stay careful!
By: keltic - 7th July 2002 at 11:21
RE: El AL pilot reports missile flash!
These guys shouldn´t play with missiles if they can´t do it properly. After the TU-154 over the Black Sea, they should take care. Men are the only animals which stumble in the same stone twice
By: KabirT - 7th July 2002 at 07:27
RE: El AL pilot reports missile flash!
Russians doubt Ukraine missile denial :
MOSCOW, July 6 (UPI) — Russians cynically greeted Saturday Ukraine’s denials about missile firings, finding an Israeli pilot’s claim he saw an anti-aircraft missile explode over Ukraine too similar to their own and deadly encounter.
“On the eve of its (Air Defense troops) Day, celebrated on the first Sunday in July, the Ukrainian air defense has again found itself in the middle of a scandal,” Moscow’s influential Kommersant daily said.
In Friday’s incident, a Moscow-bound jet with Israel’s El Al airline was flying about 250 kilometers (160 miles) south of the Ukrainian city of Dnipropetrovsk when the pilot radioed headquarters that he saw a missile climb from the ground and explode at a higher altitude than his own 10,000 meters (33,000 feet).
Last October Ukrainian artillery accidentally hit a Russian-owned Tu-154 airliner with a missile over the Black Sea during military exercises. All 78 people aboard the plane were killed. After weeks of denying any involvement, Kiev’s military chiefs finally admitted the error following an investigation by Russian and Ukrainian rescue agencies.
Kommersant quoted Ukraine’s Defense Ministry spokesman Konstantin Khivrenko as saying Friday that “no exercises involving missile launches over Ukraine’s territory had been scheduled recently.” But military leaders would have a tough time denying the latest incident after at least three separate sources confirmed the Israeli pilot’s report, the newspaper noted.
First, the crew of a Tu-154 plane flying from the Black Sea resort of Odessa to Russia’s major city in the Ural Mountains, Yekaterinburg, said they observed for 10 seconds the “movement of a shining object.”
Another Russian crew flying an Il-86 from Moscow to Turkey said they noticed “glow resembling a summer lighting, but of a different color.”
Finally, an unidentified flight director at southern Ukraine’s Melitopol airport told reporters he had seen the “light emitted by an unidentified flying object” that eventually went beyond the horizon.
Transport Minister Ephraim Sneh said Friday he had talked to the Israeli airplane’s captain, a Boeing 757 pilot who was previously a veteran fighter pilot who has seen anti-aircraft missile launchings. “He said that what he saw looked like a missile that exploded in the air,” Sneh said.
At 1:35 a.m. Saturday Moscow time, the jet safely landed at Moscow’s Sheremtyevo-1 airport and took off for Tel Aviv after an hour-long stop.
Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma called the Israeli allegations “absurd” as he spoke from the Danish capital, Copenhagen, where he was on a two-day visit.
“There were no exercises in Ukraine. Moreover, I had imposed a ban on missile launches over Ukraine after that hapless incident,” Kuchma said.
Whatever the reason behind Friday’s incident, military and political observers say the level of trust to the Ukrainian military is likely to plummet again as a string of incidents involving its air defense troops continues.
Moscow’s Vremya MN newspaper said Saturday that on April 2000 a surface-to-surface missile fired from the Chernigov training ground strayed from its path and landed on a residential building in the town of Brovary in the Kiev region.
The rocket pierced the building’s nine floors to the ground, completely destroyed one of its sections and killed three people.
Ukrainian military officials denied involvement until investigators discovered the rocket’s fragments in the rubble.
This time around, officials in Kiev are looking for other clues that could divert attention from the military-related theory behind the incident.
“The pilots could have seen the glow of a missile, launched from Russia’s Astrakhan training ground,” Yaroslav Skalko, deputy director in Ukraviatsiya agency told Moscow’s Izvestia newspaper.
“At the same time, the clouds could have been lit up by the fireworks and floodlights in (Ukraine’s Azov Sea resort of) Berdyansk — a film festival was taking place there,” added Skalko.
The flash seen by the pilot could have been merely an optical deception, proposed Anatoly Prokopenko, the deputy head of Ukraine’s weather service to Moscow’s Novye Izvestia newspaper.
“The Dnipropetrovsk region is situated in an anti-cyclone zone that provides for hot air near the surface, absence of precipitation and high visibility,” Prokopenko said.
“Taking into account such transparency of the atmosphere even a fire on the ground can be reflected far away and any flash can be seen tens of kilometers (from its original site),” he concluded.
Israeli and Russian authorities have both expressed concern over the incident, seeking assistance from the U.S. military whose intelligence satellites should provide footage that may help clarify the issue. Moscow also sent its investigators to Ukraine to collect evidence and work on the case with their local colleagues.
********
By: KabirT - 7th July 2002 at 07:21
RE: El AL pilot reports missile flash!
yes…they are two seperate incidents.
By: Saab 2000 - 6th July 2002 at 16:55
RE: El AL pilot reports missile flash!
[updated:LAST EDITED ON 06-07-02 AT 04:55 PM (GMT)]I think this may be two seperate incidents,one with the EL AL aircraft and the other with the TU-154.
By: dan330 - 6th July 2002 at 16:49
RE: El AL pilot reports missile flash!
I didn’t know El Al had any TU-154’s!!!!
Sign In
July 6, 2002 at 3:50 pm