Both pilots of an An-28 that crashed in eastern Russia last month were drunk. Ten of the 14 aboard the aircraft died when the plane went down in a forest. At the time, local reports said there was no post-crash fire at the accident scene, which was about six miles short of the airport at Palana, a tiny community on the Kamchatka Peninsula. Witnesses said they say both pilots hoisting a few the night before the flight. The Russian authorities have now turned their attention to finding out how they got to the flight deck.
According to forensic tests, the pilot was "slightly inebriated" while the first officer was "moderately" so. Blood alcohol levels were not released. Alcohol has been implicated in several Russian crashes in recent years, the most serious of which was the 2011 crash of a Tu-134 in Petrozavodsk. Two weeks ago an amphibious aircraft crashed in the Black Sea with a drunk pilot at the controls, but there were no fatalities.
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