This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

Russian experts investigating a plane crash outside Moscow that killed 71 people at the weekend have said the accident may have been caused by ice on instruments that led to faulty information on the craft’s airspeed.

“A factor in the development of a special situation in the flight could be the wrong data about flight speed on pilots’ indicators, which was likely due to iced pitot tubes [speed probes] while their heating systems were shut off,” said the Russian Interstate Aviation Committee (IAC), which investigates aircraft incidents.

The Antonov An-148 plane took off from Moscow’s Domodedovo airport on Sunday bound for the Russian city of Orsk and went down in a field about 70 kilometres (40 miles) south-east of Moscow shortly after. All 65 passengers and six crew members died.

Russian passenger plane crashes outside Moscow, killing 71 Read more

The IAC said it had completed analysis of the on-board flight recorder and would still need to analyse the black box that recorded conversations in the cockpit. It would also look at whether the pitot tubes could have malfunctioned.

Iced-over pitot tube instruments were named as one of the likely reasons behind the Air France 447 flight crashing into the Atlantic in 2009, killing 228 people on board.

The RBK newspaper on Tuesday quoted sources as saying that the captain of the Russian flight refused the de-icing procedure while the plane was at Domodedovo airport. Another Russian newspaper, Kommersant, had said that this was optional given the relatively mild temperatures at the time.

The IAC said the flight began having problems two and a half minutes after takeoff at an altitude of about 1,300 metres (4,260 feet), at which point instruments began to display vastly different speeds. The plane’s autopilot was turned off and the craft began to sharply lose speed until impact with the ground at 11.27 GMT, the IAC said.

Russia’s Investigative Committee, which probes major crimes, said it would consider the IAC’s findings in its investigation.

Emergency workers have been combing through deep snow at the crash site. On Tuesday, the emergency ministry said it had recovered 1,400 body parts and 900 plane fragments.

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Authorities were taking DNA samples from relatives of the victims in order to complete identification.

The emergency ministry added on Tuesday that it had lifted two engines from a crater formed by the plane’s impact, and sent them to be investigated. The search would continue on Wednesday, it said.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Emergency workers at the ite of Sunday’s plane crash in Ramensky on the outskirts of Moscow. Photograph: Russian Emergency Ministry/AFP/Getty Images

The flight was operated by the domestic Saratov Airlines, which announced that it would suspend usage of An-148s.

Russia has suffered numerous plane crashes, with airlines often operating ageing aircraft in dangerous flying conditions. A light aircraft crashed in November in Russia’s far east, killing six people on board. In December 2016, a military plane carrying Russia’s famed Red Army choir crashed after taking off from Sochi, killing all 92 people on board. Pilot error was blamed for that crash.

In March 2016, all 62 people on board died when a FlyDubai jet crashed in bad weather during an aborted landing at Rostov-on-Don airport.