No reliable information obtained from flight recorders

The recorders extracted from the wreckage of two planes that crashed nearly simultaneously have not revealed reliable information on the disasters' causes, a top Russian official was quoted as saying Thursday.

Vladimir Yakovlev, the Russian president's envoy for the southern region, where one of the planes crashed, also said that the main theory about the catastrophe "all the same remains terrorism," the ITAR-Tass news agency said.

&to=http://english.pravda.ru/accidents/21/97/384/13901_crash.html' target=_blank>Officials have said that several possibilities were being investigated as the cause of the crashes that killed 89 people late Tuesday, including inferior fuel and human error and that they believed the planes' "black box" recorders would clarify the situation.

A government commission appointed to investigate traveled Thursday to one of the crash sites, where a Tu-134 with 43 people aboard went down about 120 miles south of Moscow. Workers ended their search work there, but were continuing to comb the other wreckage of a Tu-154 with 46 people aboard that fell to earth in southern Russia.

President Vladimir Putin designated Thursday as a national day of mourning.

&to=http:http://english.pravda.ru/accidents/21/97/384/13891_crash.html' target=_blank>Domodedovo airport said in a statement that both planes "went through the standard procedure of preparation for flight ...(and) the procedures were carried out properly."

Still, there was skepticism that technical failure or human error could bring down two planes at almost the same time hundreds of miles apart. "That's pretty far out there on the chance bar," said Bob Francis, former vice chairman of the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board, reports Associated Press.

The Russian Emergency Ministry told CNN crews had recovered the bodies of all 35 passengers and eight crew members flying aboard a Volga-Avia Express Tupolev 134 aircraft, but did not say how many bodies had been recovered from the second crash, a Siberia Airlines Tu-154.

The Siberia Airlines plane carried 38 passengers and eight crew, the airline said. Russian officials said the crash site spread over a 40-km radius.

The crashes brought immediate worries of terrorist attacks -- Siberia Airlines, in fact, said on its Web site that its air traffic control center notified it that the Tu-154 had activated a &to=http://english.pravda.ru/accidents/21/96/382/13908_planes.html' target=_blank>hijack alert.

According to Reuters, investigators were deciphering flight recorders recovered from the wreckage of the crashed planes in an effort to unlock the secret of what brought them down.

Flags flew at half-mast and comedy shows were pulled from television schedules as relatives of those killed in Tuesday's disasters went to the crash sites to identify their kin.

&to=http://english.pravda.ru/accidents/21/96/382/13908_planes.html' target=_blank>Russian media poured scorn on official statements that the two plane crashes within minutes of one another were most likely the result of technical fault or human error.

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