Pilot error blamed for plane crash that killed 113

Russian air safety officials said today that the crash of a commercial airline in May that killed 113 people was due to pilot error.

The pilots of the Airbus-320 operated by Armenia’s Armavia airline allowed the plane to descend too low as it faced bad weather on its approach to the airport outside the Russian resort town of Sochi.

Tatyana Anodina, the head of a civil aviation agency that links Russia with 11 other ex-Soviet republics, said an automated system warned the two pilots that the plane was flying dangerously low, but that a last-ditch effort to gain altitude failed to head off the crash into the Black Sea.

Everyone on board died in the crash, which came a month before the crash of an S7 Airlines A-310 in Irkutsk, in which 125 people died.

Also today, Transportation Minister Igor Levitin announced that the families of the 26 Russian citizens who died in the crash outside Sochi would receive payments of about €3,000, on top of €7,300 from regional authorities.