Russian Plane Crash: Last Hockey Player Dies

The only member of the Lokomotiv Yaroslavl hockey team to survive a plane crash in Russia last week died in a hospital Monday.

Alexander Galimov was one of two survivors when a chartered Yak-42 jet crashed on Wednesday shortly after taking off from the Tunoshna airport. The other survivor was the plane's flight engineer, Aleksandr Sizov, who is receiving treatment and expected to recover.

After the accident, Galimov had severe burns over 80 percent of his body and doctors had put him in a medically induced coma when he reached a hospital.

Despite therapy that included all modern treatment methods, Alexander Galimov died in the morning from burns, Moscow's Vishnevsky surgical institute said in a statement on its Web site.

Including, Galimov, the crash has claimed 44 people. Lokomotiv Yaroslavl was on its way to Minsk, Belarus, for the opening game of the Kontinental Hockey League season.

The 26-year-old Galimov was born in Yaroslavl and played for his home team for seven seasons. He was also a member of the Russian national team, and competed in the 2010 and 2011 Euro Hockey Tours.

Authorities now believe that a technical fault coupled with a pilot error to be the cause of the accident. Russian officials said last week that the Yak-42 was unable to gain altitude and hit a signal tower shortly after taking off from Tunoshna.

Investigators recovered the black box data recordings from the cockpit on Friday, but the tapes are too water-logged to be deciphered at this point. Authorities are currently drying out the magnetic recordings, the Interstate Aviation Committee said.

The crash is the latest in Russia, where old, Soviet-era jets make up most of the fleet.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev demanded radical reforms in the country's private airline industry, and some speculate that the Yak-42 could be retired. Medvedev added that he thinks Russia needs to reduce the number of domestic airline companies as well as replace the current fleet with updated, foreign-made planes.

The Yak-42 used by Lokomotiv Yaroslavl was built in 1993, and had been last serviced about a month ago, according to Agence France Presse. The Yak-42 model was first introduced in 1980 and was discontinued in 2002.