Pilot Error Blamed For Air Show Tragedy

Grieving Ukrainians on Monday began burying 83 people killed when a fighter jet sliced into a crowd at an air show, and the nation's top prosecutor said pilot error and poor planning likely caused the tragedy.

As black ribbons flew from flagpoles nationwide, Prosecutor General Sviatoslav Piskun said the Su-27 had been flying too low before Saturday's crash in the western city of Lviv, and that organizers shouldn't have allowed stunts to be performed directly over spectators.

The Defense Ministry on Monday banned all warplane flights, except for basic duty ones. Ukraine's air force commander and a top officer have been detained, the plane's two pilots are under investigation and the defense minister has submitted his resignation because of the crash.

"As of now we may surely say that it was military negligence," Piskun told reporters in the capital Kiev. "Also there were signs of criminal actions by pilots. They used this vehicle incorrectly."

He said other possible causes were also being investigated, including mechanical failure of the 15-year-old plane or terrorism. He said the two pilots had originally been planning to use another Su-27 for the show but it was replaced at the last minute.

Yevhen Marchuk, head of the government commission investigating the crash, said the pilots so far had not been able to explain why the accident happened. He suggested that birds could have been in the flight zone and that the engines would be checked for that.

The jet had been performing a risky maneuver at low altitude when it nicked the ground, sliced off the nose of a plane sitting on the tarmac and roared through a crowd of hundreds of spectators before exploding in a ball of fire.

Eighty-three people were killed, including 23 children, and 116 were injured, according to the Emergency Situations Ministry. The pilots ejected and survived.

Relatives and friends of 28-year-old economics student Bohdan Shcherbynin packed a Greek Catholic church Monday in Lviv for his funeral. Next door, refrigerator trucks continued to bring bodies to the city morgue.

His mother and fiancee fainted at the church and later at the overgrown cemetery where he was interred under a muggy drizzle.

Shcherbynin's mother Maria had just arrived from Italy with clothes for the family to wear at her son's upcoming wedding. Instead, they were worn at his funeral.

"I will remember a lot of things, especially how we used to joke with each other," his younger brother Oleksandr said.

Regional authorities said 45 funerals were planned Monday and more Tuesday in and around Lviv, a picturesque but dilapidated city of cobblestone streets, medieval churches and wide boulevards.

Earlier Monday, family members and survivors sang songs and recited prayers led by Ukrainian Orthodox clerics at a ceremony at the Sknyliv air base. Flowers were strewn around the singed turf.

Raisa Volodymyrova was standing next to a Il-76MD plane on the ground that was clipped by the doomed Su-27.

"There were piles and piles of people around me. There was a body of a child lying on me," she recalled tearfully.

The accident was the latest blow for Ukraine's struggling military.

Defense Minister Vladimir Shkidchenko tendered his resignation, which was being considered by President Leonid Kuchma. Shkidchenko's predecessor was fired last year after a Ukrainian missile accidentally downed a Russian passenger jet.

Nick Cook, an aerospace consultant for Jane's Defense Weekly in London, said "they were flying awfully low," but that the pilots may have dropped altitude because of a malfunction.

The Su-27 "as a fighter has a very good reputation. NATO regards it with great awe," Cook said. "But it is well known that (former Soviet republics) have suffered greatly from lack of funds for maintenance."