Pilots blamed for fatal crash
Russian aviation experts have blamed pilot error for the fatal crash of a Boeing 737 in Kazan on Sunday.
They say initial findings show that the aircraft did not have any technical faults, said the BBC.
All 50 people onboard the flight from Moscow, including one Briton, were killed.
The Interstate Aviation Committee (IAC) investigating the crash said the pilots had aborted their first attempt to land the plane. During a second attempt they switched to manual control and made a correction when the plane lost speed, sending it into a nosedive. It then crashed into the ground.
The report drew its conclusions from data retrieved from one of the plane’s on-board recorders, correspondents say, and the climb and subsequent plunge lasted only about one minute.
Tatarstan Airlines said that both pilots were very experienced and no technical problems had been reported with the plane before the flight.
Russia, combined with other ex-Soviet states, has some of the worst air safety records in the world, according to the International Air Transport Association (IATA). In 2011, the number of accidents for the region was triple the global average.
36 passengers, including an entire major league ice hockey team were killed in a crash near Yaroslavl in 2011 and later the same year 34 people died when a RusAir jet came down on a runway near Petrozavodsk.
Last December, four people died when a Red Wings flight overshot the runway at Vnuhovo airport.
Linsey McNeill
Editor Linsey McNeill has been writing about travel for more than three decades. Bylines include The Times, Telegraph, Observer, Guardian and Which? plus the South China Morning Post. She also shares insider tips on thetraveljournalist.co.uk
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