The Cause of Crash Found

What caused the Ukrainian An-140 airplane to crash into a mountain near the Isfahan airport in Iran was the plane’s considerable deviation from the required landing approach pattern, Minister of Industrial Policies Anatoly Mialytsia announced on January 10 at a Kyiv press conference. Mr. Mialytsia, who chairs the governmental inquiry commission, made public some preliminary conclusions. In his words, the commission has finished the first stage of the crash inquiry, having decoded the readings of all “the objective information devices, the ground-based and on-board voice recorders, and the flight data recorder.” The minister added they had analyzed the flight in the Isfahan airport air traffic controllers’ responsibility area and plotted the An-140’s tentative flight path. “The trajectory shows that, after the plane had reached the initial point of landing approach maneuvering, it considerably deviated from the predetermined approach pattern, which led to the collision with a mountain,” Mr. Mialytsia said. The minister emphasized that the causes of deviation were still to be found, but he refused to discuss any versions of this error. “We cannot yet discuss versions because the final assessment will only be made after an all-round investigation. All the versions, now under investigation, are difficult to look into,” he said, also refusing to reveal the number of the versions being studied. Besides, Mr. Mialytsia found it difficult to say what period of time was necessary to complete the inquiry, only noting that this may take several months, Interfax- Ukraine reports.

Asked about the prospects of the An-140 project, Mr. Mialytsia said he was sure “there will be orders for this aircraft.” “The aircraft and its on- board systems functioned very well, and I do not think this tragedy will affect our relations with Iran, as far as the An-140 project is concerned. As to the plane, I think it does have prospects,” the minister stressed.