Armenian officials say premature to blame pilot error for May plane crash
that killed 113
AP Worldstream; Jul 28, 2006
A top Armenian air safety official said Friday that a Russian-led
investigation into the crash of a passenger jet that killed 113 people
in May could be premature in saying that the cause was pilot error.
Artyom Movsisian, head of Armenia’s civil aviation authority, said
that the exact cause of the crash of the Airbus-320 operated by
Armenia’s Armavia airline on the approach to the Russian resort town
of Sochi remained unclear.
"Was it problems with the pilot’s health or nervousness of the air
traffic controller or the pilot’s loss of direction? This remains to
be seen," he said, adding that the conclusions announced in Moscow
were only preliminary.
The airline’s security chief, Arshan Nalbandian, said the Russian
findings "do not correspond to reality because the investigation is
not over yet."
Tatyana Anodina, the head of a civil aviation agency that links Russia
with 11 other ex-Soviet republics, said Wednesday that the pilots
allowed the plane to descend too low as it faced bad weather on its
approach to Sochi airport.
Anodina added that an automated system warned the two pilots that the
plan was flying dangerously low, but that a last-ditch effort to gain
altitude failed to head off the crash into the Black Sea, according to
the ITAR-Tass news agency.
Everyone on board died in the May 3 crash, which came a month before a
Russian S7 Airlines A-310 went off the runway and slammed into a
building in the Siberian city of Irkutsk, killing 125 people.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
