IAC:Russian air crash navigator was drunk

One of the pilots at the controls of a Russian passenger plane that crashed in June killing 47 people was drunk on the job, an investigation has found. The Interstate Aviation Committee said the unnamed 50-year-old navigator was "in a light state of alcoholic intoxication" at the time of the flight.

Investigators said the pilot passed a preflight medical test however, suggesting that whoever carried out the test had turned a blind eye to his inebriation.

The navigator's drunkenness was, investigators added, a serious contributory factor. The crew attempted a landing in thick fog, it said, when they should in fact have circled round for a second approach.

Describing him as "excessively active" during the flight, investigators said he had barked manic instructions at the chief pilot and blamed "a lack of discipline and excessive self-assurance of the crew members" for the deadly crash.

The ageing Soviet-era Tupolev 134 plane was en route from Moscow to the Russian city of Petrozavodsk near Finland when it ran into serious trouble landing in bad weather.