Azernews.Az

The scrutiny into the July crash of the Azerbaijani cargo plane in Afghanistan has revealed "suspicious instances", co-chair of the commission investigating the crash has said.

Ilham Amirov, vice-president of Azerbaijan’s state airline AzAL, told a news conference Friday that information gathered from the "black box" and the traffic controller’s monitor at the Bagram airport indicates that the plane went off course while landing.

"The plane was to enter the airport from the east, but it entered from the southwest, though flights are not carried out in that direction," Amirov said. "And the crash site is 40 to 45 kilometers away from the airport. The fact that the plane crashed in an area outside its course raises our suspicions."

Amirov said one of the "black boxes" of the plane has not been found, but ruled out the possibility of the plane being shot down based on the available data.

"One of the boxes controls the operation of devices, while the other one records the crew members’ communications with each other and with the traffic control service on the ground," he said. "The latter has been found and information about its recordings is available to the Azerbaijani side. The investigation shows that the possibility of the plane being shot down or hijacked equals to zero."

The IL-76 plane, which was carrying 18 tons of cargo to the international coalition forces from the Azerbaijani capital Baku to the city of Bagram, crashed in the Parwan province, north of Kabul, on July 6, killing all nine crew members on board - five citizens of Azerbaijan and four Uzbek nationals.

NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) spokesman, Tim James, said the plane, which was not owned by NATO but was used to assist ISAF under an agreement signed, had hit the mountains at the altitude of 3,800 meters. But a Taliban spokesman told Afghan media that the Taliban had allegedly shot down the Azerbaijani aircraft "because it was carrying weapons to US servicemen based in Afghanistan".

Reports said earlier that preliminary findings of an expertise of the "black box" revealed that the plane was not shot down by a Taliban missile, but the crash resulted from a mistake of its crew. According to the expertise, the crew captain had reportedly turned down help from the air traffic controller and assumed responsibility for landing the plane visually, which caused the plane to hit the mountains.

The plane of the privately owned Silk Way Airlines, with loading capacity of 40 tons, was manufactured in Russia in 2005 and last underwent an inspection in June this year.