It appears that human error may be the reason behind why that Russian plane went down on Sunday.

Now, surveillance footage of the crash that left 71 people dead, including children, has been shared.

The footage appears to show the moment the An-148 crashed in a ball of fire just minutes after it took off, reports Fox News:

From a distance, the security video showed the moment Saratov Airlines Flight 703 plunged into a field nearly 25 miles out from Domodedovo Airport, where it had taken off from only moments before.

The Antonov An-148 regional jet disappeared from radar about 12 miles southeast of the airport, according to flight-tracking website Flightradar24. A plane can disappear from radar when it gets too close to the ground to reflect radar signals.

Take a look:

According to investigators, the crash was caused by the pilot’s failure to switch on a heating unit, which led speed sensors to ice up and provide wrong information.

As a result, chunks of wreckage were left strewn across a field outside Moscow. AU News shares:

“A special situation began to develop about two minutes and 30 seconds after the takeoff at an altitude of around 1300 metres and the indicator speed of 465-470 km/h,” the committee said.

The flight recorders captured varying data from the plane’s two airspeed sensors — a result of the pilots’ failure to turn on the heating unit for the pressure measurement equipment prior to takeoff, the committee said.

The crew turned on the autopilot after taking off but took manual controls back when they saw the conflicting speed data, with one indicator showing the speed at 0 kmh and the other about 550 kmh.

The pilots performed a series of manoeuvres and eventually took the plane into a dive at 30 to 35 degrees before it plummeted into a snowy field six minutes after takeoff.

Before the plane slammed into the ground, one of the sensors continued to show a speed of 0 kmh while the other showed a speed of 800 kmh, according to TASS.

“Forty-five seconds before hitting the ground, the plane developed a right-side roll of 25 degrees,” according to the IAC, which said it has completed an analysis of the flight recorder and still needed to analyse the voice recorder that captured conversations in the cockpit.

A criminal case has been opened. It is focusing on charges of “violations of flight safety and aircraft operation rules entailing the death of two or more people through negligence”.

On Tuesday, it was reported by the RosBiznesKonsalting newspaper that the captain had “refused the de-icing procedure before takeoff”.

Iced-over Pitot tubes were cited as the likely reason behind the tragedy of an Air France flight that crashed into the Atlantic in 2009, killing 228 people on board.

Eish.

[source:foxnews&news.au]