The announcement states that the dispatchers had advised the crew to turn right and fly higher; the pilots turned off the autopilot, lost direction and went down. According to them, the crew failed to steer the plane well, but there was a warning that the plane was reaching ground. According to them, the engines of the plane worked well, there was enough oil in it and the crash was a result of the crew.
On the basis of that, it’s assumed that the pilots lost their orientation between the sky and the land and thus the plane crashed. Such things happen only when pilots are unprofessional. But since the accident happened, the owner of Armavia, the general director of that company and the colleagues of the descended pilots have said many times that the pilots were really professional. They say that all changes in the plane’s current regime are shown on a monitor in the cockpit. Pilots see all those changes and control the situation. Besides that, the pilots had especially been trained to operate the plane based on the conditions of the Sochi airport. I talked to the general director of “Armavia”, Norayr Belluyan, who told me that the pilots were really professional.
“The pilots had gone through trainings organized by “Sabena Techniques” in Toulouse and Dubai in order to fly the A320 aircrafts. They had documents certifying their qualification”, said Norayr Belluyan.
“Armavia” does not agree with the argument that the accident was a result of the crew’s misbehavior. Besides that, specialists say that you can’t make A320 model planes fall down. It means that even if there are artificial interferences, the technical system of the plane does not let pilots crash the plane. The conclusion of the IAC states that the engines of the plane were not out of order. Based on that, it’s assumed that the plane was not out of order and the accident was not a result of the crew because they couldn’t crash the plane even if they wanted to on purpose. This means that there are other reasons. The Russian, French and Armenian specialists that participated in the investigation of the accident all agreed that the pilots were not doing their jobs well, thus they could not go against the plane’s command not to go down and go up. In order to prove this, the conclusion states that when going down, the plane’s auto pilot regime was not on and it was manual, thus the plane was not secure of falling down. Anyway, this is what the head of the Armenian Civil Aviation board, Artyom Movsisyan says. In spite of that, the conclusion of the IAC does not mention the reasons why the pilots had turned the auto pilot regime off. As the black boxes recorded everything that happened in the plane, as well as the conversations, they had to find an answer to this question. The commissions don’t say anything about this. In spite of that, they did their best to reject all other versions except the crew’s fault For instance, they write that the plane had enough oil in it. With this note they help the airline company because it was said that the plane didn’t have enough oil in it because oil was cheaper in Sochi and they were going to load it there. Oil costs 2-3 times more at the Armenian airport than in Sochi. Despite the fact that oil is imported solely by Mikhail Baghdasarov, owner of “Armavia” airlines, the company has gone through oil crises several times. The commission writes that the plane didn’t have technical problems. With this they helped both the Armenian airline company and French “Airbus” company. The most amazing thing is the fact that the mentioned conclusions don’t write anything about the dispatchers at the Sochi airport. Once again, the Russians don’t have any problems. But it is said that the accident was due to the Russian dispatchers’ work. They don’t say whether all commands of the dispatchers were right or not. The conclusions don’t mention anything about the dispatchers and it seems that they didn’t have anything to do with that flight. They say the crew was to blame. We could expect such results because the commissions finished decoding the black boxes in the middle of July but announced what they had found later. We could expect that these three investigators would announce their discoveries, which would be agreed on by all parties and would be addressed to the people that have passed away.
It turns out that Armenians have to bear all the financial and moral responsibility on their own. Armenians always tie the accident to Russia. Besides that, it is worth mentioning that head of the IAC, Tatyana Anodina is the wife of Russian former prime-minister Evgeni Primakov. It is evident that she would do her best to protect her country, furthermore, when the other side was a small and poor country like Armenia and Russia’s outpost.
So, if “Armavia” does not agree with the conclusions of the IAC, it has a right to protest. Armenian specialists took part in the investigation too and they have probably agreed with their French and Russian colleagues. As for the families of the descended pilots, neither of those members of the commission worry about them.