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Russian watchdog denies authenticity of crashed plane's black-box transcript

© Interstate Aviation Committee's press service/TASS

MOSCOW, March 6. /TASS/. The purported transcript of dialogue in the cockpit of the An-148 plane that crashed near Moscow on February 11, published by certain Russian media outlets, is not authentic, a spokesman for Russia’s Federal Air Transport Agency (Rosaviatsiya) told TASS on Tuesday.

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"Rosaviatsiya does not confirm authenticity of the ‘transcript’ of cockpit conversations on board the An-148 plane, published by the media. This ‘transcript’ misinforms the public about what was going on in the cockpit," Sergei Izvolsky said.

"Dialogues between the pilot in command and the first officer are all messed up," he added. "Besides, the transcript contains words and phrases that were not present on the authentic record."

The Russian civil aviation authority believes that the publication of the transcript was unethical and violated the existing rules and standards of air crash investigations.

An Antonov An-148 passenger plane of Saratov Airlines that was en route to the town of Orsk, Orenburg region, crashed on February 11 several minutes after the takeoff from Moscow’s Domodedovo airport. The plane had 65 passengers and six crew members onboard. No one survived.

After analyzing information from the plane’s black boxes, Russian air crash investigators named incorrect flight speed data that came from ice-covered speed gauges as a likely cause of the disaster.

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