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No conclusions on reasons behind plane crash at Sheremetyevo Airport yet — source

The source explained that the investigation is at its first stage now

© Sergei Fadeichev/TASS

MOSCOW, May 8. /TASS/. Experts cannot make any conclusions on the reasons behind the crash of the Sukhoi Superjet 100 at Sheremetyevo Airport, as there is no necessary data and its analysis for it, a source in the Interstate Aviation Committee (IAC) told TASS.

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"The investigators have no data yet which would make it possible to speak of the reasons behind the crash and whether the pilots, the land services and so on acted in the right way in the emergency situation," he said.

The source explained that the investigation is at its first stage now. "The decoding of the black boxes continues. Information was copied from the voice recorder and will be decoded. The situation with the flight recorder is more complicated, as this box was damaged. We hope that we will manage to fully decode the data," the source specified.

He added that the lead of the crew’s mistake is being studied among other leads for the accident. The interim report on the plane crash that will be released 30 days after the crash will include the analysis of the flight, the state of the aircraft, the actions of the crew members, land services, firefighters and rescue teams. "The cause and those responsible will be determined on the basis of this data," a source in the IAC explained. He added that these tragic events happen "due to a combination of factors."

A source in the aircraft industry earlier told TASS that the plane’s emergency landing was carried out in a regular mode after lightning had struck the plane and the automatic control systems failed to operate before the plane touched the runway.

Crash landing

On May 5, a Sukhoi Superjet 100 en route to Murmansk crash-landed at Sheremetyevo Airport and burst into flames. There were 73 passengers and five crewmembers on board the plane. The tragedy claimed 41 lives.

Based on this fact, a criminal case was launched under Part 3 Section 263 of the Russian Criminal Code ("Violation of safety and operational rules for aircraft which led to the death of two or more people out of negligence"). The major leads of the investigators are the pilots’ incompetence, a technical failure and unfavorable weather conditions.

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