Infobox Airliner accident name Siberia Airlines Flight 1812 Date start date 4 October 2001 Type Suspected shootdown by surface to air missile Site Black Sea Fatalities 78 all Aircraft Type Tupolev Tu 154 Tupolev 154M Origin Ben Gurion International Airport br Tel Aviv , Israel Destination nowrap Novosibirsk Tolmachevo Airport br Novosibirsk , Russia Operator S7 Airlines Siberia Airlines Tail Number RA 85693 Passengers 66 Crew 12 S7 Airlines Siberia Airlines Flight 1812 crashed over the Black Sea on 4 October 2001, en route from Tel Aviv , Israel to Novosibirsk , Russia. The plane, a Soviet made Tupolev Tu 154 , carried an estimated 66 passengers and 12 crew members. No one on board survived. The crash site is some 190 km west southwest of the Black Sea resort of Sochi and 140 km north of the Turkey Turkish coastal town of Fatsa and 350 km east southeast of Feodosiya , Ukraine . Initial information The Russian ground control center in Sochi suddenly lost contact with the airliner. Soon, the aviator pilot of an Armenia n plane crossing the sea nearby reported seeing the Russian plane explode before it crashed into the sea about 1 45 PM Moscow time 9 45 AM GMT . ref Russian jet explodes over Black Sea, BBC News , October 4, 2001 Black Sea crash wreckage located, BBC News , October 5, 2001. ref Initial reaction Occurring less than a month after the September 11, 2001 attacks , the crash was initially thought to be an act of terrorism . Nicholas Esterhazy , in an editorial in the Johns Hopkins Newsletter , speculated that, while Mossad Israeli and Russian intelligence immediately suspected a terrorist attack, Central Intelligence Agency US intelligence reported that the crash was due to an errant S 200 Angara Vega Dubna S 200 also known in the West as an SA 5 Gammon surface to air missile fired as part of a Ukrainian Air Defense Forces exercise staged off Cape Onuk or Chuluk in Crimea. Esterhazy considered this hypothesis unlikely due to the missile s range and safety fe ... more details
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