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Investigators do search at headquarters of Yak-Service airline

“The results have shown that the quality of the fuel met all the required standards,” Markin said

MOSCOW, September 28 (Itar-Tass) — Investigators have done a search at the headquarters of the Yak-Service charter airline, which operated the Yakovlev-42 jet that crashed near the city of Yaroslavl September 7, killing almost all the players, coaches and assistant staff of the Lokomotiv Yaroslavl ice hockey club.

“The investigators held a search in the offices of the Yak-Service airline, to which the Yakovlev-42D jet belonged,” Vladimir Markin, an official spokesman for Russia’s Investigations Committee said.

“In the course of the search, they confiscated technical and other documents that might be related to the Yaroslavl air crash,” he said.

As part of investigation of the case, “the investigators have questioned the workers of Yaroslavl’s Tunoshna airport, including the cargo loading inspectors, the duty navigator, the weight and balance controller, the flight service director, air traffic controllers, the senior air traffic controller, the deputy chief of the in-flight security service, and other senior specialists and executive officers.”

According to Markin, the questioning also embraced the specialists and executives of the CJSC Slavneft-Tunoshna refueling complex.

“The results have shown that the quality of the fuel met all the required standards,” Markin said.

“All in all, more than a hundred people have been questioned to date,” he said. “Flight engineer Alexander Sizov /the only person aboard the misfortunate jet who survived the crash – Itar-Tass/ has had several sessions of questioning.”

The crash of the Yakovlev-42 medium-range airliner seconds after takeoff from the Yaroslavl airport took away the lives of 44 people, including practically the entire crew of the jet.

One of the Lokomotiv Yaroslavl players, Alexander Galimov, died in a Moscow hospital five day after the crash.

Investigators have named two main versions of the causes of the accident, saying it was caused either by a failure of the jet’s equipment or by the pilots’ error.

As the investigative efforts continue, specialists are decoding information from the jet’s flight recorders.

On this background, Russia’s Federal Service for Civil Aviation on Monday annulled the Yak-Service operator’s certificates.