PLANE’S ENGINE WORKING BEFORE BLACK SEA CRASH

Irish Examiner, Ireland
June 19 2006

The Armenian airliner that crashed into the Black Sea last month
killing all 113 people aboard was intact, with its engines operating
normally and enough fuel to land prior to impact, a Russian
investigating commission said today.

The Armavia Airbus A320 was also under manual control by its pilots
up to the moment of the May 3 pre-dawn catastrophe near the Russian
port of Sochi, the Transport Ministry commission said in a statement.

The commission, which based its conclusions on an analysis of the
plane’s "black box" flight recorders, did not assign blame for
the crash.

Prosecutors have dismissed the possibility that terrorists had brought
the plane down, and officials point to rough weather or pilot error
as the likely cause.

Armavia officials have suggested that air traffic controllers were
at least partly to blame, for giving the pilots improper instructions.

The commission said it planned further analysis of the recorders and
computer modelling to determine a cause. The flight was en route to
Sochi from the Armenian capital, Yerevan.