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Chilling last words of pilot before crash that killed 71 people

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iStock / P_Wei

The final words of the pilot of a Russian passenger plane that crashed, killing all 71 people on board, have been revealed.

Saratov Airlines Flight 703 crashed soon after departing from Moscow’s Domodedevo Airport on February 11. Following the tragedy, a transcript, based on audio recordings from the cockpit, has been released by RBC.

As captain Valery Gubanov and co-pilot Sergei Gambaryan struggled to control the aircraft, Gubanov desperately instructed his co-pilot to gain altitude rather than tipping the plane downwards. He pleaded:

Why are you going down? Where? Altitude! Altitude! Altitude! Up!

As the plane continued to lose altitude and the crash became inevitable, Gambaryan’s last words before the audio recording cut off were:

That's it, we're f*****.

But what caused this horrifying crash? An investigation by The Interstate Aviation Committee determined that the pilots' failure to activate heating equipment may have resulted in flawed speed data, causing the plane to become uncontrollable.

The fatal crash happened just minutes after the Antonov An-148 airliner embarked on the 1,000-mile domestic journey from Moscow to Orsk, a city near the Kazakh border. Wreckage from the Antonov An-148 airliner was discovered about 25 miles from Moscow Airport. It was later confirmed that the tragedy had claimed the lives of all 65 passengers and six crew.

HT Daily Mail

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