MOSCOW — The last word the pilot of the Boeing 737 uttered was "circle." Moments later the jetliner slammed into the ground, investigators said Wednesday, killing all 50 people on board.
The Moscow-based Interstate Aviation Committee, which investigates plane crashes across the former Soviet Union, concluded a day earlier that the crew failed to land at first attempt, began to stall in a steep climb, then overcompensated — plunging the plane into a near-vertical dive.
The report was based on the data retrieved from the plane's flight parameters recorder, which also showed that its engines and other systems were working fine until the plane hit the ground.
On Wednesday, search teams found a tape of cockpit conversations — a crucial piece of evidence that was missing when its container was found the day before. The recording is expected to shed light upon the motives behind the series of faulty maneuvers that led to the crash.
It reveals that the pilot reported that the plane was in the wrong position for its landing and confirmed getting a traffic controller's command to circle the airport prior to making a second run.
Vladimir Markin, a spokesman for the Investigative Committee, Russia's main criminal investigative agency conducting its own probe into the crash, said that recordings of the crew's conversations with the control tower sounded routine.
"The final word the pilot said before the crash was 'circle,'" Markin said in a statement.
The head of the Investigative Committee's transportation section, Dmitry Zakharov, said Wednesday that investigators are looking into the possibility of technical failures as well as pilot error in the crash.