Russian state television has aired the final words of the pilot of FlyDubai passenger jet that crashed in Rostov-on-Don killing 62 people, suggesting pilot error could be to blame.
Russia’s Rossiya-1 channel said it had a transcript of the last words exchanged between the pilot and his crew a minute before the plane crashed to the ground.
“Don’t worry,” the pilot says in the transcript, before repeating seconds later “Don’t do that!” The last words are repeated calls to “Pull up!”, while for the last six seconds, all that can be heard were people screaming, said the channel.
The transcript suggests that the pilot lost control of the plane after switching off the autopilot.
The channel suggested, citing specialists while stressing that this was not the official version, that the pilot might have accidentally switched on a stabilising fin at the tail when he tried to pull the plane back to a horizontal position, as AFP reports.
With this fin activated, “the plane practically does not react to the pilot’s control panel”, it was claimed.
“The pilots clearly did not understand that the stabiliser was to blame for the steep dive.”
The channel said the pilot could have accidentally switched on the button activating the fin due to his reported “chronic fatigue.”
Investigations are still in progress in order to find out whether the crash was due to poor weather, pilot error or a technical fault.
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