MOSCOW—The navigator of a Russian passenger plane that crashed trying to land in an evening fog in June was drunk, investigators said Monday in a report that also blamed pilot error, an inaccurate weather forecast and inadequate ground equipment for a tragedy that claimed 47 lives.

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RUSCRASH
RUSCRASH
Reuters

Russian Emergency Ministry personnel work on June 21 at the site of the plane crash outside Petrozavodsk.

Russia's Interstate Aviation Committee found no mechanical flaws in the ill-fated Tu-134, part of an aging fleet that President Dmitry Medvedev ordered retired after the crash. Instead the report cited myriad human failings, common to those in a string of fatal crashes this summer that highlighted Russia's dismal air safety record.

Officials at the plane's operator, RusAir, couldn't be reached for comment.

The navigator passed a pre-flight medical exam that showed identical pulse rates of all crew members and appears to have been faked, investigators said. His body was found to have an 0.081% blood-alcohol level, a state of intoxication likely to make a person less self-critical, they said. Driving a car in that condition is illegal in Russia and the United States.

Equipment at the RusAir plane's destination, a tiny provincial airport at Petrozavodsk near the border with Finland, was outdated. Instead of the automated system required at Russian airports since 1992, investigators said, it measured visibility with nine signposts, but just two of them were illuminated. The airport had reported good visibility below a cloud cover 160 meters (525 feet) off the runway as the plane approached on June 20.

In fact, the report said, fog clung as low as 30 meters over the airfield.

As the plane descended blindly, it said, the navigator became "excessively active" in guiding the actions of a submissive pilot, saying to him at one point: "Turn it faster, come on! I'll bring you in just right."

The 45-year-old pilot had reason to trust the navigator, despite his inebriated state, investigators said. The navigator, five years his senior, had 25 years' flying experience and more than 13,000 hours on Tu-134 flights. The pilot himself had a flawed record, having quit another airline rather than accept a demotion for a safety violation, investigators said.

At 110 meters above the ground, the navigator should have warned the pilot that he must decide whether to land or pull up. No warning came, the report said, faulting the entire crew, including a co-pilot and flight engineer, for "lack of discipline and excessive self-assurance."

By the time an onboard alarm went off, at an altitude 60 meters, the plane was 270 meters to the right of the runway and tilting sharply. Eight seconds later it ploughed into treetops, hurtled onto a highway, overturned and burst into flames.

A Swede, a Dutch citizen and two Ukrainians were among the dead. A flight attendant and four passengers survived.

Days later, Mr. Medvedev ordered the remaining 51 planes in Russia's Tu-134 fleet withdrawn from service by next year. Once the mainstay of Soviet aviation, the cramped, noisy short-haul aircraft went out of production 27 years ago and was retired by Aeroflot, the country's flagship carrier, in 2006. Russian regulators suspended RusAir's operating license for three months.

Industry experts say Russia's poor air-safety record in recent years is due less to the condition of older planes than to a host of other problems, including substandard airports, lax government controls, corruption and widespread neglect in the pursuit of profits.

Boris Rybak, a Russian aviation expert, said Monday's crash report highlighted the lack of a "culture of safety" at smaller Russian airlines such as RusAir. "The rules are all there," he said. "More effort should be placed on harsher inspections and better efforts to maintain existing standards. It's a matter of execution."

In July and August, 18 people died in crashes of small Antonov An-12 planes. This month, Mr. Medvedev ordered the government to shut down unreliable airlines and raise penalties for safety violations.

He acted following the Sept. 7 crash of a chartered Yak-42 plane that killed 37 players, coaches and officials of a leading professional ice hockey team, along with seven of the eight others aboard. Investigators have found no evidence of mechanical failure in that accident but have yet to determine its cause.

Unlike in the June accident, the Yak-42 crew complied with critical safety rules and appeared to properly follow pre-takeoff procedures in the minutes leading up to the crash, preliminary findings by investigators indicate.

Investigators have said the plane wasn't overweight, all flight-control surfaces were moved into proper position and the engines appeared to be working normally until impact. The crew was alert enough, investigators concluded, to command maximum thrust barely a few seconds after it became clear the plane wasn't climbing away from the strip as expected.

According to a preliminary report released by investigators last week, the Yak-42 was rolling at about 110 miles per hour, or about 185 kilometers, when pilots tried but failed to pull up the nose of the plane to begin to climb away from the strip. Though pilots ordered maximum engine thrust, the aircraft's acceleration slowed considerably, investigators found.

The plane didn't become airborne until it rolled off the end of the runway, and then lumbered to an altitude of less than 20 feet before hitting an antenna and slamming back to the ground.

U.S. experts said investigators are likely to examine whether some problem with the plane's brakes, tires or other system could have prevented required acceleration on the runway.