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YEREVAN, May 6 (RIA Novosti)-Bad weather most likely caused a dramatic loss of speed that led to an Armenian Airbus crashing into the Black Sea Wednesday, killing 113 people, the chairman of Armenia's aviation association said Saturday.
Dmitry Adashyan said, "In my opinion, which is based on preliminary information, the main version of the liner's loss was a loss of speed, which fell to below the minimum 'critical' speed."
The Russian Emergency Situations Ministry said Wednesday that bad weather was most likely to have caused the crash and Adashyan, who is also a former head of Armenia's civil aviation authority, echoed the idea.
He said that after losing speed the plane's nose section dropped and fell into a spin.
"The resistance of a 'wet' plane increases several times and so the engines might not have had enough power, which could have caused the nose to drop," he said.
Adbashyan also said lightning could have been responsible for the tragedy.
"The Airbus might have crashed after a lightning strike," he said.
The A-320 operated by Armenia's Armavia was flying from the Armenian capital, Yerevan, to Adler airport, which services the popular Russian resort of Sochi, when it crashed six kilometers off the Russian coast early Wednesday morning.
Adbashyan said he hoped that the flight recorders would be recovered from the seabed on Saturday. He added that many parties wanted to find them, particularly France-based Airbus, which was seeking confirmation that a technical malfunction was not responsible for the tragedy.
"We know where the 'black boxes' are and bringing them to the surface is only a technical matter," he said.
Experts said earlier they believed the recorders were at a depth of 680 meters (2,230 feet).
