The Interstate Aviation Committee (IAC), a body authorized to investigate civil air incidents in the Commonwealth of Independent States, which are comprised of former Soviet countries, said its preliminary findings suggest that the crash involving the Tatarstan Boeing 737, which killed everyone on-board, had been caused by pilot error, BBC News reported.
Russian aviation experts said the pilots of the Boeing 737 carried out a maneuver that put the plane into a dive, news reports said. "During a second attempt to land, the pilots switched to manual control and made a correction when the plane lost speed... the jet then nose-dived and crash on to the tarmac, killing 52 people on board," BBC News also reported.
The plane had been flying in from Moscow, news reports said. The son of the provincial governor and the chief of the local branch of Russia's main security agency were among the victims, news reports said.
"Finding out their attitude was not appropriate for landing, the crew started a go-around maneuver," the IAC said.
A brief video, which was broadcast on Monday by Russian television stations was confirmed to be authentic.
Russia's previous airline crash had been in December, 2012 when a Russian-made Tupolev "careered off the runway at Moscow's Vnukova airport, [and] rolled across a snowy field and slammed into the slope of a highway, killing five of its crew of eight who were on board," The AP also reported.
