KARUNA SHINSHO, CNN ANCHOR: Authorities in Russia are trying to determine what caused an airliner to fall from the sky, killing everyone on board. As Steve Harrigan reports, the wreckage is yielding few clues.</s>STEVE HARRIGAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Three minutes before the Russian TU-154 crashed near the city of Irkutsk, the pilots signaled everything on board was OK. Investigators are now trying to determine exactly what went wrong.</s>SERGEY SHOIGU, MIN. OF EMERGENCY SITUATIONS (through translator): From the crash site, it seems as if the plane fell flat from a height of about 850 meters. It's not clear how this could have happened.</s>HARRIGAN: Three flight recorders may contain the answer. Engine failure, pilot error and a lack of fuel are some of the versions under consideration. More than 140 bodies have been pulled from the wreckage, many badly burned and difficult to identify. Charter flights were arranged to bring the relatives of the dead to the site, and a day of mourning has been declared in parts of the Russian far east. Twenty-eight Tupolov 154s have gone down since the plane went into production more than 30 years ago. The breakup of the state-owned airline Aeroflot after the fall of the Soviet Union has spawned a number of smaller, private airlines, some of whose records on maintenance and repairs are suspect. The Russian president has ordered a commission to find out the cause of this latest crash. Steve Harrigan, CNN, Moscow.
Russia Authorities Trying to Determine Why Airliner Fell From Sky