Russian experts suspect human error in Armenian air crash

Russian experts suspect human error in Armenian air crash

Deutsche Presse-Agentur
May 3, 2006 Wednesday 11:38 AM EST

Human error may have caused an Armenian Armavia airliner carrying
113 people to crash Wednesday after aborting a landing run near the
southern Russian resort of Sochi, aviation experts said.

As visibility contracted to 100 metres controllers at the Adler
airport told the Airbus A-320 to climb to 600 metres and circle for a

second attempt, an unnamed flight technician at the site told the
Interfax news agency.

But as the jet passed outlying mountains it may have banked too
steeply, causing it to drop into the Black Sea 6 kilometres offshore.

“The A-320 was flying at a speed of 250 kilometres an hour and that
may have been too little to make the ascent,” the expert said.

He rejected speculation by Armavia officials that a tornado caused
the accident.

The flight arriving from the Armenian capital Yerevan vanished from
the radar at 2:15 a.m. (2215 GMT Tuesday) without issuing a distress
signal. There were no survivors.

Russian federal aviation authorities were conducting an investigation
at the scene.