MOSCOW, January 26. /TASS/. One of the survivors of an airplane that crash-landed in Afghanistan, pilot Dmitry Belyakov, has blamed the incident on a technical malfunction that led to a fuel problem.
"The cause of the crash was a technical malfunction. In all likelihood, a problem with fuel. The presence of ice, which disrupted the flow from the main tanks to the feeder tanks," he told journalists.
Belyakov noted that the pilots had been taking measures to prepare the aircraft to make an emergency landing up until the very last minutes before being forced to crash-land.
"We were busy with emergency landing procedures; we determined the most favorable place where it could be landed, and we did find such a place, a flat mountain slope," he added.
"One of the crew members also spotted a local village. We saw it from the air when we started having problems. In the morning, we identified our location and the guy reached it and alerted the locals. The temperature in the mountains was about 15 degrees [Celsius] below freezing," the pilot recalls.
The father of the other pilot, Arkady Grachev, said that the landing of the plane in such adverse conditions was a miracle, which he attributed to the pilots’ skill.
"The airplane may be old. Wear and tear, you know. Inadequate fueling is a possibility. The experienced pilots say: The fact that they landed was a miracle. What kind of miracle? It's the pilots' job. This miracle was made possible by the pilots' hands. You have to find a place where to land. Let alone at dusk," the man told journalists at Moscow’s Vnukovo Airport.
The four people who survived the plane crash in Afghanistan - two pilots and two medics - were flown to Moscow on Friday. Their plane landed at Vnukovo Airport in the morning.
Grachev denied reports that the plane allegedly was carrying $1.2 mln.
"There was no money on board," he told the media in response to a related question.
"You should remember the mentality of the Afghan people. They came to help us and they had to be thanked somehow; we gave them some cash," the pilot explained.
Earlier, Afghan daily Hasht-e Subh, citing sources in the region, claimed that unknown persons had allegedly stolen about $1.2 mln from the Russian Falcon 10 airplane, which crash-landed in Afghanistan’s Badakhshan Province.
On the evening of January 20, radio contact with the Falcon 10 was lost. The plane disappeared from radars over an area on the border between Afghanistan and Tajikistan. Six people were on board the aircraft en route from Thailand to Moscow. Russia’s Investigative Committee has launched criminal proceedings. On January 21, the Transport Ministry of Afghanistan’s governing Taliban movement (banned in Russia) said that rescuers had located the plane and four survivors.