Dow Jones Reprints: This copy is for your personal, non-commercial use only. To order presentation-ready copies for distribution to your colleagues, clients or customers, use the Order Reprints tool at the bottom of any article or visit www.djreprints.com ||||| A passenger airliner careered off the runway at Russia's third-busiest airport while landing on Saturday, broke into pieces and caught fire, killing at least four people. 
 
 Rescuers work at the site of careered off the runway plane at Vnukovo Airport in Moscow, Saturday, Dec. 29, 2012. A Tu-204 aircraft belonging to Russian airline Red Wings careered off the runway at Russia's... (Associated Press) 
 
 Rescuers work at the site where a plane careered off the runway at Vnukovo Airport in Moscow, Saturday, Dec. 29, 2012. A Tu-204 aircraft belonging to Russian airline Red Wings careered off the runway... (Associated Press) 
 
 Rescuers work at the site where a plane careered off the runway at Vnukovo Airport in Moscow, Saturday, Dec. 29, 2012. A Tu-204 aircraft belonging to Russian airline Red Wings careered off the runway... (Associated Press) 
 
 Wreckage of a plane which careered off the runway at Vnukovo Airport in Moscow, Saturday, Dec. 29, 2012. A Tu-204 aircraft belonging to Russian airline Red Wings careered off the runway at Russia's third-busiest... (Associated Press) 
 
 Rescuers work at the site of careered off the runway plane at Vnukovo Airport in Moscow, Saturday, Dec. 29, 2012. A Tu-204 aircraft belonging to Russian airline Red Wings careered off the runway at Russia's... (Associated Press) 
 
 Rescuers work at the wreckage of a plane which careered off the runway at Vnukovo Airport in Moscow, Saturday, Dec. 29, 2012. A Tu-204 aircraft belonging to Russian airline Red Wings careered off the... (Associated Press) 
 
 Rescuers work at the site where a plane careered off the runway at Vnukovo Airport in Moscow, Saturday, Dec. 29, 2012. A Tu-204 aircraft belonging to Russian airline Red Wings careered off the runway... (Associated Press) 
 
 Officials said there were eight people aboard the Tu-204 belonging to Russian airline Red Wings that was flying back from the Czech Republic without passengers to its home at Vnukovo Airport. 
 
 Emergency officials said in a televised news conference that four people were killed and another four severely injured when the plane rolled off the runway into a snowy field and disintegrated. 
 
 The plane's cockpit area was sheared off from the fuselage and a large chunk gashed out near the tail. 
 
 The crash occurred amid light snow, but other details were not immediately known. 
 
 The state news agency RIA Novosti cited an unidentified official at the Russian Aviation Agency as saying another Red Wings Tu-204 had gone off the runway at the international airport in Novosibirsk in Siberia on Dec. 20. 
 
 The agency said that incident, in which no one was injured, was due to the failure of the plane's engines to go into reverse upon landing. 
 
 On Friday, the Aviation Agency sent a directive to the Tupolev company's president calling for it to take urgent preventive measures. 
 
 Vnukovo airport spokeswoman Yelena Krylova said it had enough personnel and equipment to keep the runway fully functional Saturday. The airport resumed receiving planes after a break of several hours. 
 
 Prior to Saturday's crash, there had been no fatal accidents reported for Tu-204s, which entered commercial service in 1995. The plane is a twin-engine midrange jet with a capacity of about 210 passengers. 
 
 Vnukovo, on the southern outskirts of Moscow, is one of the Russian capital's three international airports. 
 
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 Vladimir Isachenkov in Moscow contributed to this story
– A happy milestone in airline safety: This year has been the safest by far since humans started tooling around in jets, reports the Wall Street Journal. Among the numbers it cites from the Aviation Safety Network: Worldwide, 22 fatal crashes had been reported this year as of yesterday, down from 28 last year and from a 10-year average of 34. None were in the US, a streak that goes back to 2009. Only 10 of those involved passenger planes, and just three of those were made in the West. The total of 470 fatalities is down from the 10-year-average of 770. The rate of one fatal accident per 2.5 million flights is nearly twice as safe as last year's previous record. The improved numbers come as more people are flying—2.9 billion in 2012, up 5.5% from 2011. Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean have work to do: Those regions accounted for 7% of the world's passenger traffic but about half of the year's airline accidents. Update: The number of fatal accidents is rising by one: A passenger plane went off the runway at Moscow Airport this morning and caught fire, killing four of the eight aboard, reports AP.