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By Dmitry Solovyov

MOSCOW, Feb 10 (Reuters) - The chief pilot of a Russian airliner which crashed last year killing 88 people had alcohol in his blood but the primary cause of the crash was poor training, investigators said on Tuesday.

A Boeing 737-500 operated by Aeroflot subsidiary Aeroflot-Nord crashed as it tried to land in the Ural mountains city of Perm early in the morning, killing everyone on board in Russia's worst air crash for two years.

An official commission which investigated the crash said the main cause was inadequate training which caused the crew to lose orientation, but it also identified the crew's preparation for the flight as a contributing factor.

"A forensic study ... detected the presence of ethyl alcohol in the crew commander's body before his death," Alexei Morozov, head of the investigating commission, told a news conference.

"The crew commander's regime of work and rest in the period preceding this aviation accident was a factor behind his overall tiredness and ran counter to the established standards."

Morozov said the crew had lost its orientation flying at night through thick cloud, with the aircraft's autopilot and automated throttle control switched off. He said the crew had not been adequately trained to fly on that type of plane.

A graphic re-enactment of the accident, demonstrated to reporters, showed the Boeing veering to the left, then it flipped over and finally nose-dived into the ground.

Deciphered from the flight recorder, the commander's words uttered before the crash were: "You see it yourself, I can't..."

DRUNK OR NOT?

All Russian pilots of passenger airliners must undergo medical checks before flights. Their blood pressure must be measured and they must be tested for alcohol.

"I think that to judge if the crew were drunk or not is more the prerogative of prosecutors than ours," Morozov said. "The technical commission does not seek to detect when and where alcohol intake took place -- during the flight, before preflight medical checks or after."

"I repeat again: the direct cause of the accident was the loss of orientation in space." Morozov said officials from the United States, Britain and France had taken part in the inquiry.

Aeroflot, a debt-ridden airline in the 1990s when it had a fleet of mainly Soviet-built planes, has transformed itself into an image conscious, profit-making company with global ambitions.

The company's image was dealt a severe blow in March 1994 when 70 people were killed in a crash in Siberia. Investigators found that the pilot's teenage son had been allowed to enter the flight cabin and had accidentally switched off the autopilot.

Last month, a slurred preflight announcement made by a pilot of an Aeroflot Boeing 767 bound from Moscow for New York sparked panic that he was drunk and alarm among passengers prevented take-off. The pilots were replaced.

Aeroflot later apologised, saying the pilot was not intoxicated but could have possibly suffered a stroke. (Reporting by Dmitry Solovyov; editing by Richard Balmforth)

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