Speculation on cause
The charred debris smoldered overnight
and throughout Wednesday morning as investigators picked
through the wreckage and aviation experts speculated
about the cause of the crash.
"Overall, internationally
speaking, 75 percent of the cause of air accidents is
human error," said S.S. Sidhu, a former secretary
general of the International Civil Aviation Organization.
"Mechanical or systems failures are only 25
percent."
 Sidhu said it was still too early for
a definitive determination about the cause, but he said
the Russian-speaking pilot of the Kazakhstan plane could
have faced a language barrier. Many pilots from former
Soviet republics, he said, had previously flown only in
the Soviet Union.
Kazakh Air's Bhaskar disputed the
idea. "If that was the case we would have accidents
every other day," he said. "I believe the cause
of the collision was either pilot error or control tower
error."
Brij Bharadwaj, an
independent aviation expert, suggested that the KazAir
pilot may have miscalculated his altitude instructions
from the control tower. Russian-built aircraft use metric
measurements, while Western planes use feet.
Just before two planes
collided, air traffic controllers told the approaching
Saudi jet to climb to 14,000 feet (4,308 meters) and
instructed the Kazakh plane to descend to 15,000 feet
(4,615 meters), leaving little margin for error.
"At the time when
they were given the instructions, it is crucial at what
height they were flying," Bharadwaj said.
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