Pilot error was to blame when a fighter jet smashed into a school in July, killing 36 people in the country’s worst aviation crash in decades, the government said.
Pupils had just been let out of class when the Chinese-made F-7 BJI aircraft slammed into the private Milestone School and College in Dhaka on July 21.
The government announced the findings of a committee report into the crash after it was submitted to the interim leader, Chief Adviser Muhammad Yunus.
“There was an error in his take-off,” Yunus’s press secretary Shafiqul Alam told reporters on Wednesday.
The military had initially said that the 27-year-old pilot was on a routine training mission when the jet “reportedly encountered a mechanical failure”.
He tried to divert the aircraft away from densely populated areas but crashed into the two-storey school building.
Alam said the report recommended that the air force “conduct its training outside Dhaka”.
It also advised that the Civil Aviation Authority ensure “infrastructure such as hospitals, schools, warehouses, and small industries are not built near airports”. — AFP
