Last week the “Interstate Aviation Committee” (IAC) released its final report on the 3 July incident in Irkutsk in which an Airbus A310 operated by S7 (formerly, Siberian Airlines) slid off a wet runway while landing, clipped several building, and burst into flames, killing more than 120 people.

According to the IAC the crash of SibirAir flight 778 was caused by “pilot error.”

The Russian news daily Kommersant has a slightly different take on the matter. In an article published on 23 November, the paper reported that:

IAC experts knew from the beginning of their investigation that Flight 778 made its last flight with a reversing system failure of the left engine. Valves located in the rear part of the turbine that control the direction of the flow of gases stopped closing and thus only forward thrust could be created. That malfunction caused an inconvenience for pilots of the A310, but was not grounds for stopping a flight. The main braking on an airplane is performed by the flaps and wheel brakes, and reverse throttle is only used supplementally, as backup. In the complex situation, just one reversing system, the right one, which was functional, would have helped the A310 pilots brake.

The landing at Irkutsk really was complex for [Pilot 1st Class Sergei] Shibanov and his crew. After the long flight from Moscow, they landed on a short and inconvenient runway at the Irkutsk airport. Shibanov was counting on only the usual application of flaps and wheel brakes, since a dispatcher in Irkutsk, according to S7, told him that the runway was dry and wheel cohesion should be good. As soon as he saw that there was rain at the airport and then felt that the wheel brakes were not holding the craft and it was skidding on the runway, the pilot turned on the reversing system as an unplanned emergency measure because immediate additional braking was needed.

When he pressed the switch for the reversing system, located between the pilots’ seats, with one finger of his right hand, Shibanov most likely bumped the handle that controlled the left, deactivated engine, located only centimeters away, with his other fingers. As a result, he simultaneously turned on the right reversing system and left takeoff system and the plane picked up speed, turning to the right, hitting garages and bursting into flames.

Lawyers representing the families of passengers killed in the crash have denounced the IAC report as bogus. Citing faults in the design of the A310 reversing system as the principal cause of the disaster, they have announced that they will file suit against American and British companies that make components for the A310.

ScP