ARMAVIA’S AIRBUS 320 TO CRASH IN SIMULATOR

Kommersant, Russia
June 20 2006

The deciphering of both black boxes of Armavia’s Airbus A320 was
announced yesterday. On May 3, A320 crashed into the Black Sea near
the resort city of Sochi en route from the Armenian capital Yerevan.

According to the black boxes, all systems of the aircraft were running
normally but it couldn’t be said about the actions of pilots.

The next move of the experts will be to independently attempt to pull
A320 out of the dive. But they will do it on land, not in the air.

The experts have managed to collect and match all data on the last
flight of A320 during a month and a half, news service of Interstate
Aviation Committee announced Monday.

Even though no final conclusion has been reached so far, the experts
disproved some assumptions already. It is clear now that A320 had
fuel enough for around an hour and a half, it was not breaking during
the flight and its engines were functioning properly up to the water
collision.

But the actions of pilots didn’t appear very adequate. In an effort
to justify or deny the suspicion, the experts will model the last
flight of the airbus in the aircraft simulator at Gromov Flight
Test Institute.

The black boxes of A320 showed Captain Grigory Grigoryan and another
pilot were very nervous and the denial of air traffic controller to
accept A320 broke them completely.

The flight wasn’t easy even without that denial. Before reaching
Adler, the pilots were told about bad weather conditions and even
turned back. Then, they headed for Adler again.

So, the pilots were rattled when nearing the Black Sea’s coast. The
landing clearance calmed them down a bit but another command followed
once they descended to 280m: "The weather sharply got bad.

Meteo-minimum doesn’t correspond to announced earlier. Stop
descending. Go by the right turn to the second round, take the 600m
altitude."

Grigoryan lost the nerve, the experts suppose. He was to make a
standard maneuver of four turns, 90 degrees each and four short direct
space intervals between them. He started by using the autopilot,
but, for some reason, shifted to the hand control when completing
the second turn. And failed to handle the aircraft in this mode.