YEREVAN QUESTIONS RUSSIAN VERDICT ON PLANE CRASH
By Karine Kalantarian
Radio Liberty, Czech Rep.
Oct 25 2006
Armenia’s aviation authorities have expressed serious reservations
about Russian investigators’ preliminary conclusion that last May’s
crash of an Armenian airliner in southern Russia, which killed all
113 people aboard, was caused by pilot error.
Citing their findings , Russia’s Transport Minister Igor Levitin said
in July that the crew of the Armenian Airbus A-320 lost control of the
plane as they made a second attempt to land at the Black Sea city of
Sochi. This conclusion was endorsed by the Moscow-based Interstate
Aviation Committee (ICA) of the Commonwealth of Independent States
which also investigated the deadliest air disaster in Armenia’s
history.
The Armenian government’s Civil Aviation Department essentially
accepted this verdict at the time. At the same time, its director
Artyom Movsisian said that although the "human factor" apparently
played a role in the crash, Yerevan believes that there are still
some key unanswered questions about its causes.
It emerged on Wednesday that Movsisian’s department has presented the
ICA with a six-page document that questions some of the conclusions
drawn by the Russian investigators. In particular, the Armenian side
complained that the Russians failed to take note of Sochi airport’s
alleged failure to "detect dangerous weather conditions" that are
thought to have prevented the plane belonging to the national airline
Armavia from landing safely on first attempt.
Armavia’s owner Mikhail Baghdasarian insists that the A-320 would
have avoided the crash had it not received a last-minute order to
veer away from the airport’s runway and make a second approach.
Baghdasarov, who is a Russian citizen of Armenian descent, has rejected
the ICA verdict and demanded an "independent inquiry."
The Civil Aviation Department also took issue with the investigators’
implicit claims that Armavia had failed to properly train its pilots
and assess their professional level. It further urged them to drop
from their preliminary conclusions an assertion that moments before
the crash the A-320 crew found themselves in a "tense psycho-emotional
situation" due to unspecified "imperative demands to land at Sochi."
According to rumors cited by the Armenian press, those demands were
made by some wealthy and influential passengers of the doomed flight.
There have also been allegations that a gunfight may have broken out
between crime figures that were allegedly among the victims of the
crash. The Armenian government and Armavia have dismissed the claims.
Aviation Department spokeswoman Gayane Davtian could not say when the
ICA will release its final verdict or whether Yerevan will succeed
in influencing its content. "They may publish their final findings
at any moment," she told RFE/RL.