Translated material
Uncontrolled actions
The cause of the plane crash in Irkutsk, according to experts, was crew error
Experts from the Interstate Aviation Committee (IAC) yesterday officially reported to members of the government commission headed by Transport Minister Igor Levitin their conclusions about the causes of the crash of the S7 (formerly Siberia) airline A310 plane at Irkutsk airport last summer. According to the conclusion of the IAC technical commission, which also included representatives of Rostransnadzor, Rosaviatsiya, a number of departments of France (as the state - the developer and manufacturer of the aircraft) and the USA (as the state - the developer and manufacturer of the engines), a tragedy that claimed lives 125 people, caused by erroneous actions of the crew. Thus, the version of the disaster put forward by experts at the very beginning of the investigation and published by our newspaper was officially confirmed.The A310 passenger airliner, flying from Moscow's Domodedovo airport, carrying 203 passengers and crew members, crashed at Irkutsk airport early in the morning on July 9. Having successfully landed, the plane suddenly began to pick up speed again and, flying out of the airfield, crashed into a concrete fence and adjacent garages. Having partially collapsed, the liner caught fire and exploded. As a result of the disaster, 125 people were killed and dozens were injured.
At first, experts put forward a variety of versions - equipment failure (in particular, the brake system), bad weather conditions, and even the inconvenience and danger of the Irkutsk airport itself. Because of the A310 accident, the issue of building a new airport there was even quickly resolved.
Over several months of work, experts not only examined all the surviving elements of the aircraft and engines, but also carried out mathematical modeling of the accident and full-scale tests of the movement of the A310 in similar conditions. Test pilots, active line pilots and instructor pilots from Russia and France took part in them. In addition, all known similar accidents with the A310 in the world were studied. As a result, experts were almost completely able to reconstruct the picture of the tragedy.
In the official conclusion of the IAC, it looks like this: “The cause of the crash of the Siberia Airlines A310 F-OGYP aircraft was the erroneous and uncontrolled actions of the crew during the run stage after landing in the aircraft configuration with the reverse thrust of one engine deactivated. After landing the aircraft, the pilot-in-command, while controlling the reverse of the right engine, involuntarily and uncontrollably moved the thrust control lever of the left engine, the reverse of which was deactivated, from the “idle throttle” position to the position of significant forward thrust. In the absence of proper control and information on the part of the co-pilot over the engine operating parameters and the speed of the aircraft, having a sufficient reserve of time to recognize the current situation, the crew did not take the necessary measures to switch the left engine to low throttle or turn off the engine.”
In principle, the expert report states that the crew made a direct mistake when controlling the aircraft. However, if we translate technical terms and formulations into a language understandable to ordinary people, this error, according to the investigation, seems extremely banal even in everyday life.
In the cockpit of the A310 there are two engine control handles - thrust levers (the airliner has two engines and, accordingly, two handles), located between the seats of the crew commander (on his right hand) and the co-pilot. To turn on the reverse (roughly speaking, reverse thrust of the engine, this function is used simultaneously with braking by the landing gear wheels), the desired handle (right engine - the right handle farthest from the commander, left engine - the left handle closest to him) must be pulled towards you . The reverse on the left engine of the crashed A310 was initially turned off for technical reasons. But this situation is normal; the power of one engine was enough to stop the aircraft. After landing, while stopping the aircraft, as the decoding of the “black boxes” showed, the crew commander pulled the right stick towards himself. At this moment, with the thumb of the same hand, according to experts, he unconsciously rested on the left handle and involuntarily pushed it away from himself, accordingly turning on the engine in acceleration mode (to a position of significant forward thrust, as stated in the IAC conclusion). The roaring engine moved the plane, rolling at a speed of 180 km/h, sideways from the runway, and then brought it to a collision with ground buildings. The only question that experts have not answered is why the crew did not turn off the engine. At the moment the airliner left the runway, the commander shouted: “Turn off the engine,” but this command was never carried out. Braking with the chassis wheels could no longer help. The brake pedals, as shown by the “black box” data, were simply pressed to the floor, but the A310 chassis slid on the rain-soaked ground as if on ice. Moreover, the thrust control knob of the left engine, which was in the acceleration position, was also not brought to its original position until recently. For some reason, neither the commander of the ship Sergei Shibanov nor the co-pilot Vladimir Chernykh were able to pull it towards themselves.
However, this version of the tragedy did not seem credible to everyone. A representative of the Rostransnadzor flight safety inspection department signed the final report with a “special opinion”, according to which the left engine turned on due to strong shaking during landing.
Representatives of S7 airline said yesterday that they were aware of the commission’s findings, but no comments were forthcoming.