Seven systemic errors of the pilots contributed to the crash in which President Boris Trajkovski and his team were killed, announced Omer Kulik, president of team examining the accident, at today’s press conference.
The aircraft descended below the minimum allowed altitude, weather conditions were unfavorable, and the pilots didn’t follow the standard procedure to land at another airport. They decided to continue with the landing. The plane wasn’t maintained properly. “King Air” was found within one hour after the crash, but SFOR didn’t want to cooperate in the investigation. The plane had no traces of explosives, i.e. it is not a case of assassination.
According to Kulik, the system errors are related to the pilots’ training to fly in such conditions as the ones that morning in Mostar. Kulik presented simulated flight which was made from Skopje to Mostar in the same “King Air” plane. It established that the pilots didn’t have enough information about the massive clouds because of which it was practically impossible to land safely.
– Poor weather conditions and the concentration of clouds are an indirect cause, not a storm, as it was announced in the first report. The reasons for the crash of the “King Air” include one direct and seven pilot errors. Indirect reason is the weather, and there are also four internal system errors, two in Macedonia and Bosnia, poor organization of the Government and the coordinator of the aircraft, i.e. SFOR, the Bosnian Government, our agency and our officials who organized the flight, i.e. the agency that issued licenses to pilots without adequate training – said Kulik.
