Investigators probe causes of Armenian air accident

Agence France Presse — English
May 6, 2006 Saturday

Experts met Saturday with the air traffic controller who was on duty
at Sochi airport in Russia when an Armenian plane crashed, killing 113,
on Tuesday night, to look into what caused the disaster.

The specialists “decyphered the recorded conversations between the
pilots and air traffic control,” a spokeswoman for Armenian Civil
Aviation told AFP.

She did not give any further details on what the conversations
revealed, stating only that “the investigation is continuing.”

Initial data from the enquiry suggest that bad weather caused the
accident.

The Armavia Airlines plane, an Airbus A320, probably either came
down when heavy rain forced a loss of speed, or was actually struck
by lightning, according to Dmitri Adbachian, a former Soviet pilot
who now heads an Armenian association of aviation specialists.

The bodies of 32 of the dead passengers have been taken to Yerevan,
Armenian Civil Aviation confirmed, with a further seven to be sent
on Saturday night.

Rescuers have so far only found 51 bodies and seven of these have
not yet been identified, Sergei Aristov, Russia’s deputy transport
minister, said on television.

“The search will continue until it is deemed to be hopeless”, Aristov
said. He nevertheless asked relations of the dead who had come to
Sochi to return to Armenia.

In addition to the crash near Sochi, another Armavia A320 was destroyed
early on Friday morning when a hangar at Brussels airport caught fire.

Armavia announced Saturday that it would replace the two planes it
lost this week by leasing new ones from Airbus, one of which would
“probably” be an A319.

The company is also taking delivery of a new Airbus made in 2005 at
the end of this month, so that its fleet will effectively be increased
by one to six aircraft.