MOSCOW. Dec 27 (Interfax) - Pilot error is being considered the main theory behind the crash of the Tupolev Tu-154 airliner in the Black Sea near Sochi, the Kommersant newspaper said citing sources close to the investigation of the air crash.
One of the eyewitnesses who saw the Tu-154 jet fall was a coast guard officer from the border troops of Russia's Federal Security Service, or FSB. The officer was on a boat off the coast of Sochi at the moment of the plane crash, Kommersant said on its website.
"The border guard said that he happened to witness an accident early on Sunday morning. A plane departing from Sochi Adler Airport (AER) began to lose altitude fast, instead of climbing, thus nearing the sea surface, as though it was going to land on the water, the eyewitness said. The eyewitness noted that the airplane's spatial position seemed very strange to him, even for a landing jet. The Tu-154 was traveling at a low speed with its nose unnaturally turned up," the newspaper said.
The eyewitness compared the position of the jet at the moment with that of a motorbike put on its rear wheel by the biker. One instant later, the airplane touched the surface of the sea with its tail, which broke off after the impact, before tumbling into the waves and sinking quickly, the eyewitness said.
Kommersant said citing experts that a number of factors somehow related to the actions of the crew could result in such an image of the accident as drawn by the eyewitness.
"The Tu-154 airplane had taken off the runway at a usual speed of 345 km/h before starting to climb, the FSB [Federal Security Service] said on Monday. But only several seconds later, the aircraft started to lose speed and consequently, altitude, experts say. The first thing why that could have happened is a pilot error that could have taken place as the pilots were trying to lift the aircraft up in a much too intensive manner. Thus, supposedly, the airplane was put on a beyond-stall angle of attack, which resulted in speed loss and lift loss at its wings and the airliner's descent towards the sea surface," the newspaper said.
However, technical factors could have contributed to the Sochi air crash as well, it said.
"In particular, [that could be] possible overload on the plane (it is known that a pilot referred to his airplane as 'heavy' in a conversation with the air traffic controller), the airliner's imbalance due to its cargo, a malfunction of its trailing-edge flaps or stabilizers, or a sudden thrust rollback in its engines," the newspaper said.
Meanwhile, according to the newspaper's source, investigators can drop the 'terrorist' theory of the air crash only after a thorough analysis of the information stored in the airplane's recorders, as well as of an opinion of those forensic experts examining bodies of the passengers and crewmembers killed in the air crash and fragments of the Tu-154 jet.
No traces of explosives have so far been found on the recovered bodies and fragments of the airplane, the source told Kommersant.