State commission probes Chisinau air crash

The State Administration of Civil Aviation (SACA) avoids to name any preliminary causes of the air crash of Friday evening on the Chisinau Airport. Its ad interim manager, Iurie Zidu, told a news conference on Saturday, April 12, that a state commission was set up to investigate the accident. The results are to be announced no sooner than in a week. According to Iurie Zidu, the AN-32 cargo plane took off from the Chisinau Airport at 22.02 bound for Sudan, with a stop in Antaliya. When taking off, the dispatcher was not seeing the aircraft on the radar and asked the crew to return to remove the flaw. As the visibility was OK, the crew decided to land without the dispatcher’s help. At 22.15, when touching the land, the plane caught fire. It stopped between the track and the fence, at 100 m off the track. The fact that the plane was not identified by the radar could not lead to the crash, Iurie Zidu specifies. Such cases happen 4 times a year at the Chisinau Airport. The aircraft belong to the Kata Air Trans company from Sudan. It carried 2 tonnes of aircraft oil and four 4 technicians. The crew was formed from 4 people. None of those eight, 4 Moldovan and 4 Ukrainian nationals has survived. So far only 7 carbonized bodies were found. The last corpse is under the debris, said the manager. The last names of the Moldovan citizens are Burghila, Dmitrisin, Crasilnicov and Volosciuc. The Ukrainians’ names are Moisenko, Vdovenko and Tikhonov. The head of the Moldovan Protection and Emergency Service, Mihail Harabagiu, has said the special services had a prompt reaction, but it was impossible to save the crew. A corpse was found at a distance of 100 m from the fence, another was thrown at 125 off. According to the director of the Chisinau Airport, Roman Podcorato, although it is a single case in the history of the airport, the administration was ready for such emergencies. Two fire trucks reached the place within 3 minutes. The airport had to be closed for 1-1.5 hours, and then resumed operating, Podcorato said. Specialists from Moscow will be involved in the probe and the black boxes have been found and will be searched together with prosecutors. The inquest does not aim to find the guilty one, but to prevent such accidents, said Zidu. The Government vows to provide assistance to the families of the victims. The Ukrainians’ relatives will be accommodated at hotels and will be given money to take the corpses to be buried at home.