Two Russian passenger planes which crashed almost simultaneously may have been the targets of a terrorist attack.
Russian security experts were today at the scene of both crashes, which happened within minutes of each other.
One plane, bound for the Black Sea resort of Sochi and carrying more than 40 passengers and crew, sent a hijack alarm before crashing near the southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don.
Witnesses on the ground saw an explosion on board the second plane just before it crashed near Tula, 90 miles south of Moscow, Reuters news agency reported. It was bound for Volgograd with a similar number of people on board.
Russian president Vladimir Putin called in the country’s FSB security service to investigate both incidents.
Both the planes took off from Domodedovo airport and the FSB was working with police to check that proper security checks had been carried out on the passengers. The black box flight recorders of the two planes are reported to have been recovered.
One theory is that the crashes are linked to Sunday’s forthcoming presidential election in Chechnya, where separatist rebels are battling to break free of Moscow control.
The company claims the site is secure and that all customer information is encrypted. In a statement, head of Information Systems, Rian Liebenberg said: “Much to our regret it appears that this area of the site had become exposed during the recent release of some new functionality onto the website.”
He said that the security breach occurred in the area of the site concerning the retrieval of existing booking information. He added: “This is not a scenario that a normal customer looking to view or amend their booking would happen upon.”
Holidayautos.co.uk has not estimated how long the faulty security system was in place, or how many of more than a million online booking records were vulnerable. It stated that this is the first incident of its kind.
Report by Charles Leocha
