MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 20th June, 2023) A court in Russia sentenced a passenger jet pilot on Tuesday to six years in a penal colony after finding him guilty of breaking air safety rules that led to a fatal crash-landing in Moscow in 2019.
"The court has imposed a sentence of six years in a penal colony," the court in Khimki, near Moscow, said in a statement.
Denis Yevdokimov, the pilot of the stricken plane, was barred from flying aircraft for three years and ordered to pay 1.5 million rubles ($17,850) apiece in compensation to two plaintiffs in the case. He was not taken into custody and will travel to the penal colony on his own.
Yevdokimov was piloting the Sukhoi Superjet 100 (SSJ100) plane with 78 people aboard headed from Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport to the northern Russian city of Murmansk on May 5, 2019, when it ran into trouble and had to return to the runway. The jet made a hard landing, breaking the chassis and catching fire, with 41 people aboard dying in the disaster.
