A verdict has been rendered in the high-profile case of the crash of the TU-204-100 plane of the Aviastar-TU airline in March 2010.

Today, the Domodedovo City Court issued a verdict against the TU-204-100 pilots. The aircraft commander, Alexander Kosyakov, and the co-pilot, Alexey Mikhailovsky, were found guilty of violating traffic safety rules and operating air transport, which negligently resulted in the infliction of grievous harm to human health (Part 1 of Article 263 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation). The court sentenced A. Kosyakov and A. Mikhailovsky to 1 year of suspended imprisonment with a probationary period of 2 years. In addition, the court banned them from operating air transport for a year.

The court found that during a flight within the Moscow air zone at an altitude of 5400 meters, an involuntary disconnection of automatic control from the computer flight control system of the aircraft occurred, as a result of which a malfunction occurred in the flight navigation equipment. In this regard, the aircraft commander turned off the autopilot and switched to manual control.

According to the court, A. Kosyakov, without assessing the meteorological situation at Domodedovo airport, made a deliberately unfounded decision to descend and land in extremely poor visibility.

“Having reached a height of 60 meters, the pilot, obliged in the current meteorological conditions to stop the plane’s descent and fly to an alternate airfield, continued landing. As a result, the plane collided with the ground and collapsed. At the same time, A. Mikhailovsky, knowing about the commander’s unreasonable decision, did not reminded him of the need for a go-around, but did not supervise the implementation of this technological operation. By their criminal actions, the pilots violated the rules of movement and operation of air transport, as a result of which the 6 crew members on board the aircraft suffered various bodily injuries, including serious ones," noted in the message of the Prosecutor General's Office of the Russian Federation about the verdict.

Let us remind you that the Tu-204, which belonged to the Aviastar-Tu airline and was flying without passengers on the flight Hurghada - Moscow, March 22, 2010. At about 2:34 Moscow time, he made an emergency landing in a forest 1.5 km from the runway of Domodedovo Airport. There were a total of 8 crew members on board, all of them were hospitalized.

Pilots given suspended sentences for plane crash near Domodedovo