It has already been 40 days since the A-320 plane belonging to “Armavia” airlines crashed into the depths of the Black Sea before making it to the Adler airport. On June 13, relatives of the victims left for Sochi to pay tribute. Most of the relatives went out to sea by boat and threw flowers where the A-320 plane crashed.
A day before the relatives left, the press department at “Armavia” airlines had no clue as to how many people were leaving for Sochi, but they did say that all certified relatives would get on the plane for Sochi that day.
“There may be some people who don’t want to take the plane to Sochi, so there will be special buses to transport them there,” said “Armavia”.
Co-chairmen of the committee on Georgian-Armenian economic cooperation, Valodya Badalyan, told “168 Hours” that 81-82 people would go to Sochi in 3 buses and 1 car. V. Badalyan also knew that no more than 20 people would travel by plane.
“We are mainly going to take care of providing the relatives with places to stay, while the Armenian community in Sochi has promised to provide the relatives with food,” said V. Badalyan.
The Georgian authorities received the passengers’ documentation ten days ago and that’s why the Armenian side is sure that there will be no problems on the Georgian and Abkhazian borders. The buses going to Sochi will come back in two days.
What happened to the compensations?
Usually, whenever a plane or a large means of transportation is subjected to a disaster, the families of the victims receive compensation and those compensations form a large amount of money in normal countries. Each of the victims of the A-320 plane crash was promised 20,000 dollar compensation by the “Grand” insurance company. Besides that, the Ministry of Finances and Economy of Armenia had even opened up an account to which anyone could have transferred money. As of 2:00 p.m. June 12, there was 88,321,000 AMD on the account (approximately 213,00 dollars) and if we divide that amount by 113, we get approximately 1880 dollars for each victim. Executive director of the “Grand” insurance company, Artak Antonyan, answered to our questions in written form.
-Have the families of the A-320 plane crash victims started receiving their compensations? If yes, how many people have received them and if not, why and when will they get it?
-We aren’t giving the compensations yet because we still haven’t finished registering the relatives’ documents. They will receive their compensations as soon as that it is over.
-How do you plan on distributing those compensations?
-There isn’t going to be any order. The relatives that will submit all their documents will receive the compensations.
-What kind of documents should the relative submit in order to get the compensation?
-The relatives of the victims must submit the following documents:
1. Death certificate
2. Copies of passport and/or birth certificate
3. Marriage certificate
4. Copies of children’s birth certificates
5. Passports of parents and/or relatives and/or copies of birth certificates
6. Telephone numbers
The list of documents is based on the actual tie that the relative has with the victim of the plane crash.
-How much time will it take until all the relatives receive their compensations?
-If we get all the documents in time, then approximately one month.
-The insurance company had promised 20,000 dollar for the relative of each victim. Perhaps you have made a change in the amount. If the amount has changed, how much is it now? Why has it changed and is it possible for different people to receive different amounts?
-The amount will be decided after observing the documents.
How will decrypting the black boxes help?
Forty days after this tragedy and the only good news we heard was that the black boxes of the plane had finally been taken out of the depths of the water and decrypted. It seemed as though some issue would be solved after decrypting the autographic recordings of the A-320 plane, however people will not have any access to the information contained in the black boxes.
“Grish, pull the wheel towards you”-this is the only sentence the people have heard and claim as the last sentence heard before the plane crash. Police are silent, claiming it’s the law and there is an objective explanation for this- the early flow of information may falter the process. As well-known pilot Dmitri Adbashyan told “168 Hours” during a telephone conversation,
“A criminal case has been brought up and it is too early to talk about that. The court will decide who is to blame.”
The strange thing about all this is that, although the Armenian side has refused to give any information concerning the black boxes by staying true to international laws, the Russian web page, on the other hand, has already published an article presenting a part of the technical, in other words “parametrical” writing. It is worth mentioning that the same article talks about the fact that the “verbal” autographic recording hasn’t made it to Moscow from Paris, while the Armenian side was saying the opposite: “the process of decrypting the autographic recordings is still in progress and there are about 300 data about the flight in the recording”.
More and more variants
“There was some pushing and shoving, firing and other things going on in the plane”-this is what citizens are spreading the word about today. There is really no objective explanation for this and most importantly, the evidence. But the people keep talking. Even if this was so, the whole city wouldn’t be talking about that and only the people who need to know that would know. Perhaps somebody needs to have these rumors going around?
“I believe that the weather was the reason for the plane crash, including the storm, rain, and heavy winds,” said D. Adbashyan. However, when I asked Adbashyan whether the weather was just a condition and not the reason, the pilot said:
“Perhaps the plane was struck by lighting, we don’t know.”
Mr. Adabashyan also said that the commander is the one making the final decision and he had to be the one to decide whether to land or make the second turn. Perhaps there were terminological misunderstandings and the dispatcher made a mistake, especially since according to non-official information, the dispatcher was drunk at the time.
Some anonymous dispatchers and pilots also blame the dispatcher for the A-320 plane crash on the same Russian web sites, but these people don’t understand why the crew obeyed the dispatcher, especially since there was no need.
“I don’t understand anything at all. What can we do if the internal landslip of the clouds was 100 meters? According to my sources, the first pilot of that plane had actually managed to land even lower, at 60 meters. The dispatcher was supposed to know about that too. I don’t know why he made the plane make a second turn.”
There is another variant, which was once again brought up by Russian journalists and specialists.
“There must have been something heavy in the plane that made it crash,” writes the “Comsomolskaya Pravda”. Based on the report in that newspaper, the heavy thing was the Armenian tuff rock, which was being taken to Sochi for construction purposes.
“Perhaps it was a cross-stone, which passenger and former director of “Armavia” airlines Vyacheslav Yaralov was taking with him to put on the grave of his mother-in-law,” writes the “Comsomolskaya Pravda” newspaper.
In closing, the report states that the heavy weight of items on the plane could have lowered the level of fuel in the plane and caused it to crash. Perhaps there will be some objective explanations to this later on, but how come they haven’t been able to take out one piece of tuff or cross-stone from the depths of the sea until now?
Speaking of the shortage of fuel, I found out some strange information a couple of days ago, according to which some “Armavia” workers had resigned from work. Either one of the pilots or the stewardesses had seen a new technological “method” while the plane preparing to take off was being filled with fuel- an equipment showing how much fuel has been filled in the plane wasn’t the real amount. After seeing this, some workers resigned, claiming that they didn’t want to be the victim of another plane crash. One of the representatives of the airline company said that the workers are simply afraid because that wasn’t their first flight when the fuel tank was half empty with the purpose of buying cheaper fuel in Sochi. The former pilot is blaming the dispatcher, which obviously didn’t have the right to tell the crew what to do. It becomes clear as to what the Russian presses are doing-they are spreading the wrong information and blaming the Armenian side. The “Armavia” airline company is accused of many things, starting from the fact that the plane hadn’t gone through technical check-ups for two years, insurance issues, etc. However, it’s impossible to insist on anything while the French specialists haven’t come to their conclusions.