A top investigator of last month's Aeroflot Airbus crash refuted on Wednesday a statement by Russia's Transport Minister saying two children were taking flying lessons in the cockpit when the plane suddenly went into its fatal tailspin.
Vladimir Mokrinsky, head of the investigation's flight subcommission, said that the account, issued Tuesday by Transport Minister Vitaly Yefimov, was "not serious and absolutely groundless," Interfax reported.
The contradiction between the two top officials -- Yefimov heads the overall investigation -- added confusion to an already muddled picture of what happened on board Aeroflot Flight 593 before the crash near Novokuznetsk that took 75 lives.
Mokrinsky was responding to a statement signed by Yefimov and sent to news publications including The Moscow Times, that confirmed, on the basis of information obtained from voice recorders in the Airbus cockpit, that the "son and daughter of one of the crew members" were in the cockpit getting a lesson on piloting the plane right before the crash.
The statement did not say whether the children were responsible for the crash. However, it appeared to confirm earlier statements by officials that the 15-year-old son of pilot Yaroslav Kudrinsky had caused the crash by inadvertently disturbing the plane's controls.
It also prompted two major British newspapers, The Times of London and The Daily Telegraph, to run front-page accounts of the crash that laid the blame on the crew's negligence in allowing the children to take control of the plane.
In an editorial titled "Aeroflot's Dangerous Flying Practices Must Be Stopped," The Times called on international civil aviation authorities to step in and examine the safety standards of Aeroflot and its subsidiaries "and threaten instant expulsion of those not satisfying minimum standards.
The Times also reported that since the Airbus accident on March 23, numerous passengers had canceled flights.
Agents who book tickets on Aeroflot in Moscow reached Wednesday noticed a similar reaction.
"After the crash, people have asked to rebook," said Slava Pomerantsev, manager of Moscow-based Asia Express travel, which usually sells about 65 international flights daily.
"There probably has been such a reaction," said an Aeroflot spokeswoman who did not give her name.
She said she believed there would be an official announcement about the results of the investigation "in a few days."
But Mokrinsky said that until analysis of the flight data recorders had been completed, which he said would take another two weeks, "it is too early to speak about reasons for the tragedy."
Other analysts agreed with Mokrinsky that the Transport Ministry's statement was released unusually early.
However, some maintained the announcementwas necessitated by Aero-flot's tight-lipped response to alarming reports about the accident's cause.
"I think that it is a good thing because Aeroflot has been so quiet," said Keir Giles, head of Russ-Sky, a company specializing in Russian aviation.
Valery Eksuzyan, the general director of Russian Airlines, the Aeroflot daughter company that leased the Airbus, has been the only airline official to go on the record denying any negligence in the crash.
Eksuzyan on Wednesday repeated his denial that the children had anything to do with the accident, saying that both of the plane's pilots were in their seats at the time of the crash.
But Eksuzyan was quoted by the newspaper Trud on Wednesday as saying that the pilot's last words before the crash were "get away, get off." The second word, slezai, in Russian is used to tell someone to get off of a chair.
Eksuzyan, who said he has read a transcript of the flight recorder data, told Itar-Tass that Aeroflot would be required to pay $75 million dollars to the company that owned the leased Airbus, if it is determined that negligence on the part of the crew was the cause for the crash. NTV Television said if the cause was mechanical failure, Airbus would be responsible for the sum.
Yury Alexeyev, an analyst of the Transport Ministry's chief air inspection service, said in an interview that he also believed it was too early to draw any conclusions about the cause of the crash. But he added that any of the versions discussed -- including that the children played a role in the crash -- were possible.
The other possibilities, he said, were unexpectedly strong turbulence or a failure in the Airbus' automatic pilot system.
An Airbus spokesman reached by phone at the company's headquarters in Toulouse, France, said Airbus had no information about a technical failure.
"Based on the limited information, there is nothing to suggest that the aircraft is at fault," said the spokesman, who asked that his name not be used.
He said that in numerous discussions with the Russian investigators Airbus had heard nothing that "would lead to our fault."
The Transport Ministry's statement said there had been no evidence of a technical failure in the Airbus, although Alexeyev said flight recorder information could have missed this data.
Alexeyev said flight experts would fly another plane over the same route as Flight 593 to try to reenact the situation.
He also confirmed earlier reports that recorded information would be provided to a military research institute outside Moscow where experts would try to reconstruct the situation from the sounds picked up by the flight recorder.
Vladimir Mokrinsky, head of the investigation's flight subcommission, said that the account, issued Tuesday by Transport Minister Vitaly Yefimov, was "not serious and absolutely groundless," Interfax reported.
The contradiction between the two top officials -- Yefimov heads the overall investigation -- added confusion to an already muddled picture of what happened on board Aeroflot Flight 593 before the crash near Novokuznetsk that took 75 lives.
Mokrinsky was responding to a statement signed by Yefimov and sent to news publications including The Moscow Times, that confirmed, on the basis of information obtained from voice recorders in the Airbus cockpit, that the "son and daughter of one of the crew members" were in the cockpit getting a lesson on piloting the plane right before the crash.
The statement did not say whether the children were responsible for the crash. However, it appeared to confirm earlier statements by officials that the 15-year-old son of pilot Yaroslav Kudrinsky had caused the crash by inadvertently disturbing the plane's controls.
It also prompted two major British newspapers, The Times of London and The Daily Telegraph, to run front-page accounts of the crash that laid the blame on the crew's negligence in allowing the children to take control of the plane.
In an editorial titled "Aeroflot's Dangerous Flying Practices Must Be Stopped," The Times called on international civil aviation authorities to step in and examine the safety standards of Aeroflot and its subsidiaries "and threaten instant expulsion of those not satisfying minimum standards.
The Times also reported that since the Airbus accident on March 23, numerous passengers had canceled flights.
Agents who book tickets on Aeroflot in Moscow reached Wednesday noticed a similar reaction.
"After the crash, people have asked to rebook," said Slava Pomerantsev, manager of Moscow-based Asia Express travel, which usually sells about 65 international flights daily.
"There probably has been such a reaction," said an Aeroflot spokeswoman who did not give her name.
She said she believed there would be an official announcement about the results of the investigation "in a few days."
But Mokrinsky said that until analysis of the flight data recorders had been completed, which he said would take another two weeks, "it is too early to speak about reasons for the tragedy."
Other analysts agreed with Mokrinsky that the Transport Ministry's statement was released unusually early.
However, some maintained the announcementwas necessitated by Aero-flot's tight-lipped response to alarming reports about the accident's cause.
"I think that it is a good thing because Aeroflot has been so quiet," said Keir Giles, head of Russ-Sky, a company specializing in Russian aviation.
Valery Eksuzyan, the general director of Russian Airlines, the Aeroflot daughter company that leased the Airbus, has been the only airline official to go on the record denying any negligence in the crash.
Eksuzyan on Wednesday repeated his denial that the children had anything to do with the accident, saying that both of the plane's pilots were in their seats at the time of the crash.
But Eksuzyan was quoted by the newspaper Trud on Wednesday as saying that the pilot's last words before the crash were "get away, get off." The second word, slezai, in Russian is used to tell someone to get off of a chair.
Eksuzyan, who said he has read a transcript of the flight recorder data, told Itar-Tass that Aeroflot would be required to pay $75 million dollars to the company that owned the leased Airbus, if it is determined that negligence on the part of the crew was the cause for the crash. NTV Television said if the cause was mechanical failure, Airbus would be responsible for the sum.
Yury Alexeyev, an analyst of the Transport Ministry's chief air inspection service, said in an interview that he also believed it was too early to draw any conclusions about the cause of the crash. But he added that any of the versions discussed -- including that the children played a role in the crash -- were possible.
The other possibilities, he said, were unexpectedly strong turbulence or a failure in the Airbus' automatic pilot system.
An Airbus spokesman reached by phone at the company's headquarters in Toulouse, France, said Airbus had no information about a technical failure.
"Based on the limited information, there is nothing to suggest that the aircraft is at fault," said the spokesman, who asked that his name not be used.
He said that in numerous discussions with the Russian investigators Airbus had heard nothing that "would lead to our fault."
The Transport Ministry's statement said there had been no evidence of a technical failure in the Airbus, although Alexeyev said flight recorder information could have missed this data.
Alexeyev said flight experts would fly another plane over the same route as Flight 593 to try to reenact the situation.
He also confirmed earlier reports that recorded information would be provided to a military research institute outside Moscow where experts would try to reconstruct the situation from the sounds picked up by the flight recorder.
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