Kiev, Ukraine ? One of the pilots of a Ukrainian fighter jet that crashed into spectators at an air show and killed 85 people said Friday that technical problems and a faulty flight plan were to blame for the crash.

“At the decisive moment, the plane became uncontrollable,” Volodymyr Toponar said in comments to the UNIAN news agency, carried on Ukrainian STB television.

“It was completely unexpected,” he said. “I fought the plane up to the last second, to spare as many people as possible and only thanks to Yegrov did we save our own lives.”

Toponar and Yuriy Yegrov, his co-pilot, ejected and survived the crash. They remain hospitalized in stable condition.

It was the first public comment from either of the pilots since the June 27 tragedy. Doctors pronounced the pilots fit enough to answer investigators’ questions on Wednesday.

Toponar’s comments came after the chief investigator this week accused the pilots of ignoring their flight plan and attempting tricky, untested maneuvers that caused the plane to nick the ground, slice through a parked plane and cartwheel into the crowd at the air show in the western Ukrainian city of Lviv. Some 85 people were killed and 156 others injured. Several are still hospitalized in serious condition.

“The pilots failed to follow the flight plan and performed four difficult maneuvers that they had not done before,” Yevhen Marchuk, the chief investigator of the accident, said Wednesday. Marchuk also blamed air force leaders for failing to order a change of course some 90 seconds after the plane veered from the flight path.

The decision whether to prosecute the pilots will be made only after they have fully recovered, a spokesperson from the prosecutor’s office said Friday. Doctors said they expect Toponar to be released in a month while Yegrov needs two months to recover.

Toponar said he was following orders in flying over the crowds.

“The flight shouldn’t have been performed over people, but the order was to fly where people were,” Toponar told STB television.

Meanwhile, a military court in Lviv this week ordered the flight’s ground-control leader, Yuriy Yatsuk, jailed on charges of criminal negligence.

Judge Oleksandr Yaremenko said that Yatsuk should not even have led the exercise. “He was not experienced enough to lead Su-27s flying at low altitude in maneuvers requiring the highest level of piloting,” Interfax quoted the judge as saying.

Air Force Cmdr. Gen. Col. Volodymyr Strelnikov and Cmdr. Serhiy Onyshenko are under investigation for criminal negligence as well.

After the crash, President Leonid Kuchma fired Strelnikov and other top air force commanders. Defense Minister Volodymyr Shkidchenko tendered his resignation, but Kuchma refused to accept it.