RUSSIAN AIR FORCE CO BLAMES ARMENIAN AIRLINER CRASH ON PILOT ERROR
Ekho Moskvy radio, Moscow
16 May 06
[Presenter] The Air Force commander-in-chief, Vladimir Mikhaylov,
believes there is no point in raising the black boxes of the Airbus
that crashed near Sochi. Yuliya Kosilova has more.
[Correspondent] The cost of searching for and retrieving the on-board
recorders of the lost A-320 is unjustified, Vladimir Mikhaylov,
commander-in-chief of the Air Force, thinks. Even if the black box
is brought up from the bed of the Black Sea, he believes, it won’t
tell the experts anything new. It will only confirm that it was all
down to the weather.
But Mikhaylov blames the crash not on the weather itself but an error
by the pilot, who failed to take proper account of the difficult
weather conditions. That said, Mikhaylov thinks that the captain’s
decision not to try and land at Sochi and instead return to Yerevan,
whence the aircraft had taken off, was the right thing to do. That’s
what he should have done, according to Mikhaylov. There’s little
point in changing your mind, because it can bring serious consequences.
Mikhaylov pointed out that the black boxes are at the heart of
media comment, which he regards as distressing for the victims of
the relatives. However, he added, military specialists are willing
to help decode the on-board recorders.
[Presenter] The Armenian airliner crashed into the Black Sea on 3 May,
with 112 people on board. All perished.
[The operation to raise the black boxes continues, RTR Russia TV
reported at 1300 gmt. There are fears that the batteries powering
the boxes’ location transmitters will soon go flat.]