Russian investigators have blamed last week's plane crash in Siberia, in which 145 people died, on pilot error. The Tupolev passenger jet crashed as it was trying to land at Irkutsk airport. The findings of the investigating committee, made public today, cite a sudden, unexplained lurch on the controls by the co-pilot as the cause of the crash. The disaster has once again raised questions about the safety of Russian airlines.
The head of the committee, Deputy Prime Minister Ilya Klebanov, ruled out a fault with the aircraft as the cause of Russia's worst air disaster for decades. Instead, co-pilot Sergei Didenko, a 40-year-old father of two who was at the controls in the fateful final seconds of the flight, was singled out for responsibility.
Investigators said that they are still trying to establish why such an experienced pilot, with 2,004 hours flying time on the Tu-154, should make such a deadly mistake. According to Mr Klebanov, the black box flight data recorders showed no problems with the "emotional state" of Didenko and the captain, 51-year-old Valentin Goncharuk, and both were well rested before the flight.
The only hint of anything untoward was that the co-pilot's reactions to the captain's instructions had not always been "adequate" during the flight, said Klebanov. "We must try to understand why on a plane in full working order in fine weather conditions, at a certain moment the pilots took the wrong actions. For us that is question number one," Klebanov told a press conference in Moscow.
