Khabarovsk governor says deadly fire aboard emergency landed SSJ100 in Moscow was caused by pilot error, but Aeroflot says baloney

Khabarovsk Governor Sergey Furgal announced on Wednesday that the deadly fire aboard an Aeroflot Sukhoi Superjet 100 on May 5 at Moscow Sheremetyevo Airport was the result of pilot error. “We’ve received the official findings that the aircraft was technically in perfect condition… The commission’s official conclusion is that the plane was technically fully operational. It was 100 percent human error,” the governor said in an interview with the TV station Guberniya.

Spokespeople for Aeroflot have called Furgal’s comments a “bald-faced attempt to exert pressure” on the men and women investigating the disaster. The company has demanded that the governor produce evidence for his claims or retract his statement. Aeroflot maintains that it has not received the “official conclusion” Furgal cited in his interview.

The Sukhoi Superjet 100 is manufactured at an aircraft factory in Komsomolsk-on-Amur in the Khabarovsk region.

On May 27, Transportation Minister Yevgeny Ditrikh announced that a preliminary report about the causes of the May 5 disaster would be released officially “within the next month and a half.”