YEREVAN, May 3 (RIA Novosti) - An Airbus passenger jet that crashed into the Black Sea Wednesday morning with the loss of everyone on board had been carefully maintained and was in good technical condition, Armenia's civil aviation expert said Wednesday.
In all, 113 passengers and crew were killed when an Airbus belonging to Armenian airline Armavia and bound from Yerevan, the capital of Armenia, to the popular Russian resort of Sochi crashed early in the morning.
Artyom Movsisyan, the head of Armenia's main civil aviation department, said the A-320 had undergone complete technical overhaul in April 2006, and experts from Sabina Technics company had given a positive conclusion on its technical condition shortly before the takeoff.
Movsisyan said the plane had been filled with 10 metric tons of fuel and a flight to Sochi lasting less than an hour needed only 3.5 tons.
He added that the relevant Russian agencies would be in charge of investigation.
The Russian Emergency Situations Ministry said the plane had crashed about six kilometers from the Russian Black Sea coast when it had made a turn to start the landing. The ministry also said bad weather was the most likely cause of the crash, which claimed the lives of all the people on board, including six children.
Armavia Airlines said it had leased the jet produced in 1995 by the Airbus consortium, in 2004 from Vermille International Services B.V. Before leasing, the plane underwent a technical overhaul in Bordeaux, France.
Armavia Airlines was set up in 1996 and carried 507,000 passengers in 2005, up from 380,000 in 2004. In June 2005, MIKA Armenia Trading president Mikhail Bagdasarov bought 100% of shares in the company.
