Moscow: A plane crash near Moscow on Sunday which killed all 71 people on board could have been caused in part by instruments showing incorrect speed, the TASS news agency quoted investigators as saying on Tuesday.
The instruments could have malfunctioned because sensors had iced over, said the Russia Interstate Aviation Committee, which is investigating the crash.
The AN-148 passenger plane was en route from Moscow to the Russian provincial city of Orsk and was operated by Russia's Saratov Airlines.
Russia Hunts for Body Fragments, Clues
Hundreds of emergency workers in Russia scoured snow-covered fields outside Moscow on Monday, collecting body fragments and clues after a plane crash a day earlier that killed all 71 people on board.
President Vladimir Putin has ordered a special commission to investigate what caused the AN-148 plane operated by Saratov Airlines to crash outside Moscow shortly after taking off for the city of Orsk about 900 miles (1,500 km) southeast of the capital.
Among the possible causes investigators are looking into are weather, human error and the plane's technical condition. The crew did not send any distress signals.
Experts on Monday started studying the plane's two flight recorders, as well as some of the around 500 plane fragments recovered so far. Footage from a CCTV camera that captured some of what happened was posted online on Monday. It showed what looked like a large ball of fire streaking through the sky.
Investigators, who have opened a criminal case into the tragedy, said in a statement however that the plane had been in one piece when it plummeted towards the ground and not on fire. An explosion had occurred only after it crashed, they said.
Debris and human remains were spread over a radius of one km (less than a mile) around the crash site and recovery teams had found over 1,400 body fragments so far, the RIA news agency reported, saying the search could carry on for a week.
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