Irkutsk, Russia. July 9, 2006. Aircraft crushed in Irkutsk. Airbus 310 of S7 airline (former Siberia airline) carried out flight 778 from Moscow airport Domodedovo. Having landed in the airport of Irkutsk, the plane exceeded the limits of the runway, broke through the grid of concrete obstacle, ran into garage, and blazed up with fire. The aircraft had 193 passengers and 8 members of the crew. According to all available information, 124 people died.
Photo: Evgeny Kozirev
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Siberian Aircraft Crushed on Land
// Disaster
Siberian airbus didn’t get a place on the cemetery
Russia announced mourning for the victims of the crash of Airbus-310 aircraft of S7 (former Siberia) airlines. The aircraft arrived from Moscow and successfully landed in Irkutsk. However, it did not stop on the runway, and crushed into a car-service building. Out of 204 people onboard, 122 died. The rest of passengers survived thanks to the flight attendant who managed to open the escape hatch before fuel tanks exploded. Experts believe this crash, second Airbus crash in the last 3 months in Russia, was caused by a fatal coincidence of several factors.
The aircraft was stopped by a car-service building
A-310 landed in the airport of Irkutsk at 7:46 a.m. local time. First class pilot Sergey Shibanov, who navigated the aircraft, reported successful landing to the flight operations officer right away. These were his last words which sounded on air. Few passengers, who managed to escape the aircraft without serious injuries, afterwards were telling that the aircraft’s wheels touched the tarmac, but A-310 did not lower its speed and kept moving along the runway. “We were moving at enormous speed,” recalls Tomash Gorzhkievich, citizen of Poland who was traveling to Mongolia through Moscow and Irkutsk. “It seemed the pilot did not intend to slow down. Engines suddenly roared [apparently, the pilot was trying to switch the engines in reversing mode which helps to slow down.—Kommersant] and we began moving even faster. It seemed the aircraft would take off again. However, it did not happen. The aircraft began shaking, because the tarmac was over, and we were now moving on ground surface. The aircraft began gradually turning somewhere to the right, then we heard noise of a crash, and were thrown forward. We could see through the windows that our aircraft crushed into some buildings—garages or warehouses.”
In fact, the first obstacle for the aircraft, moving at the speed of over 100 kilometers per hour, was a fence of concrete slabs encircling the airport. Yet, the slabs did not stop the airplane. The passengers felt a slight push only, while the 100-tonn machine was breaking through concrete. The next crash became fatal for the people onboard. The airplane hit against a modular building of a private car service situated on the territory of a garage complex adjacent to the airport.
“The blow demolished the entire cockpit with the crew and the aircraft’s first cabin occupied by business class passengers,” say the members of Irkutsk regional emergency rescue service, who arrived to the site 9 minutes after the crash. “The aircraft was relatively whole and was not on fire yet. Only its nose was literally corrugated. Its fuselage and wings were as if lying on top of one-storey garages.”
The rescuers said that people in the back cabin managed to open an escape hatch and let out an inflatable slide, before the rescuers arrived. However, the slide did not inflate completely for some reason, and was hanging in the air. So, the passengers had to jump from the height of 4 meters onto the ruins of garages. Many of them broke arms and legs.
“We and tens of other passengers were saved by flight attendant Vika” [Viktoria Zilberstein.—Kommersant], tells Tomash Gorzhkievich’s companion Aldona Vidavskaya. “It was she who opened the back hatch and let out an inflatable slide. Unfortunately, it did not spread out to its full length. I seriously hurt my leg when jumping.”
Rescuers helped several more tens of people to escape from the aircraft. Aldona Vidavskaya and other passengers were thinking everyone would be saved, as they walked away from the airplane, but they heard an explosion at that moment. Rescuers say there was nearly a ton of kerosene in the aircraft. The major part of fuel leaked out of damaged tanks, located under the wings, onto the ground, but did not burn. However, highly inflammable fuel vapors still remained in the tanks, and they exploded. A possible reason might be the arcing of wires leading to the car service and the garages, which tore and stripped after the crash.
“Right tank exploded first,” say the rescuers. “The explosion was so powerful that fuselage and wings were demolished right away. The tail was thrown backwards. In a minute, a wall of fire rose above the ruins, and a new explosion followed. This was the left tank.”
After this, the rescue operation actually turned into a searching campaign. Firemen had only to pour foam onto the ruins, and rescuers—to search for the bodies of dead, and badly burned but alive people. Police also joined in the search. It turned out that some 15 people, mainly young men and women, who managed to leave the aircraft among the first to escape, with no serious injuries, hurried to leave the airport. Some of them came to a nearby holiday village. Others stopped passing cars on the road, and the latter drove them to their homes. Summer residents afterwards recalled how they gave their garden-work coats and shoes to the people covered with blood and torn clothes who suddenly appeared on the road.
It was announced that 66 passengers were saved by yesterday’s evening (1 woman died in the hospital). Also, 3 flight attendants, 3 employees of S7 company who did not have tickets but were on the so-called list, and 1 unidentified man who safely escaped and ran off, survived. 10 people are reported missing. Their bodies must have been torn to fragments.
122 bodies arrived to morgues. Among the victims of the disaster, there are people well-known in Irkutsk and in Russia. These are: the holder of 2 decorations of Courage, head of Federal Security Service Bureau of Irkutsk region, major-general Sergey Koryakov (he was transferred to Baikal region from the same post in Ingushetia after Beslan tragedy); Deputy Head of Administration of Ust-Ordynsky Buryatsky autonomous area Natalya Suborova; Deputy Head of Civil Defense and Critical Emergency Situations Department of Irkutsk region Colonel Yuri Mukhtarov; piano player Maria, daughter of writer Valentin Rasputin, whom he came to meet in the airport. Among the victims there also is a head of Siberian branch of Ingosstrakh insurance company—the company which insured flight #778. “We cannot name the exact amount of insurance compensation until Monday morning,” said Ingosstrakh spokesman Vladimir Kleimenov. “It will be hundreds of millions of dollars.”
Unpiloted side slip
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| Irkutsk, Russia. July 9, 2006. Aircraft crushed in Irkutsk. Airbus 310 of S7 airline (former Siberia airline) carried out flight 778 from Moscow airport Domodedovo. Having landed in the airport of Irkutsk, the plane exceeded the limits of the runway, broke through the grid of concrete obstacle, ran into garage, and blazed up with fire. The aircraft had 193 passengers and 8 members of the crew. According to all available information, 124 people died. |
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Representatives of different services investigating the crash in Irkutsk airport have not come to a united opinion on the reasons for A-310 crash yesterday. By the way, the investigators still probe the crash of A-320 Armavia in Sochi in May 2006. Office of Public Prosecutor of Irkutsk region initiated the criminal case for violation of rules of flights and flight preparation. However, the defendants of this case will appear only after the experts of the Inter-State Air Committee and Airbus employees decipher aircraft recorders and make their conclusion. However, the case might be closed due to the death of defendants, who are usually said to be pilots.
So far, experts have agreed on one thing—the disaster happened due to a fatal coincidence of several unfavorable factors.
The last flight of A-310 was a hard one for the pilots. They had to fly for quite a long time, for 5 hours, during night time, changing several time zones. The landing itself was difficult as well. “The airport of Irkutsk is actually called death-trap among pilots,” says a pilot of local squadron. “The runway is not located outside the city, as it usually is, but right in the city. Moreover, it has a strong slope. Pilots have to maneuver among the hills and densely build-up area when they land. Besides, there is always fog here, even in winter, which comes from non-freezing river Angara. Also, Irkutsk old residents say it was a bad idea to build the airport on this spot, because there used to be a cemetery for the victims of Stalin’s repressions.”
The landing of A-310 was complicated by weather conditions. Thick clouds were hanging above Irkutsk on Sunday morning, and the lower limit of clouds was 200 meters. It was raining for 2 days running, and the runway was wet. The runway of Irkutsk airport receives heavy long-haul flights, but it leaves practically no place for maneuver due to its length—2700 meters only. It will be extended in 2007.
According to one of the versions, when A-310 was landing, difficult weather conditions and the airport’s drawbacks were aggravated by a mistake that could have been made by the tired pilots. It is quite likely that, coming in to land, the pilots intentionally decided not to use reverse thrust of the engines to slow down on land. It is well known that reverse thrust might cause skidding and unpiloted side slip of the aircraft on a wet runway. In such cases, the slowdown is carried out in the so-called automatic mode. When the wheels touch the tarmac, a sensor triggers, and switches on the interceptors—fins on the back surface of the wing. These fins go up, and slow the aircraft down by restraining the airflow, and press the aircraft to the ground. In 8 seconds after the fins go up, wheel breaks switch on automatically. However, in order to set the mode of automatic slowdown, the pilot should activate the system beforehand, by pulling to himself a special lever, while still being in air. Perhaps, the experienced pilots of A-310, who had nearly 20,000 hours of practice, simply forgot about the lever. As a result, the aircraft landed without the breaks activated. When the pilots understood their mistake, they began to operate the aircraft manually. They used automatic reverse and switched on breaks. However, it was too late—the aircraft has already skipped half of the runway without lowering its speed. And the undertaken emergency braking led to a side slip on the wet runway. Besides, there was simply not enough runway.
According to another version, it was not the fault of pilots, but of the machine itself. For instance, the so-called hydraulic circuit of the aircraft might have failed. The circuit transmits the pilots’ orders to the aircraft’s mechanisms, to fins and brakes. Besides, hydraulic system also switched the reverse mode of the engines. In this case, experts see the disaster this way. Pilots made the landing according to the schedule, landing on the exact necessary spot of the runway. However, when they tried to stop the aircraft, it turned out none of the mechanisms responsible for braking was working. Disabled hydraulics could not switch on the interceptor fins, wheel brakes, and reverse thrust. Moreover, when the pilots tried to switch on the reverse mode of the engines, it came out vice versa—the engines only gave a forward momentum to the racing aircraft.
It should be noted that there are 3 hydraulic circuits in the aircraft. Should one of them fail, the pilot can switch on the second or the third one (a general lamp of defects informs the pilot of the failure). However, some time is needed to switch from one circuit to another. Taking into account bad weather conditions and the shortness of the runway, the pilots might have not had enough time to switch the circuits.
S7 airline is confident both in the professionalism of its pilots and in the good condition of the aircraft. According to S7 representatives, the crashed Airbus was constructed in 1987, used by Aeroflot airline for 7 years, and leased by S7 two years ago. During all this time, A-310 flew nearly 60,000 hours, which is not much for an aircraft of this class. Moreover, the aircraft did regularly scheduled maintenance. Its last technical inspection, the so-called A-Check, was done 1.5 months ago. The aircraft was supposed to fly 85 hours more till the next similar check.
Sergey Mashkin; Alexandra Terentyeva, Sergey Berg, Irkutsk
&Irkutsk Air Disasters
Aircraft Tu-154 of Baikal airline, flying from Irkutsk to Moscow, crashed on January 3, 1994. Twelve minutes after it took off, the liner fell down near the village of Mamony 11 kilometers away from the airport. It crashed because second engine began burning, and the pressure in all hydraulic systems fell. The disaster killed 9 members of the crew and 115 passengers, including 16 foreign citizens.
December 6, 1997. Twenty seconds after taking off the airfield of Irkutsk air-union, cargo aircraft An-124 of Russian Air Forces fell onto the residential blocks of Irkutsk. The liner was going to Vietnam carrying 2 battle-planes Su-27 onboard. House #45 on Grazhdanskaya street suffered most. Parts of the aircraft also fell on house #120 on Peace street, and children’s orphanage #1. The disaster happened because the engines failed during the take-off. It killed 72 people, 68 of whom were on land.
July 26, 1999. Carrier Il-76 with 30 tons of Chinese-produced clothes crashed during take-off from Irkutsk airport. Owned by Elf-Air company in the region of Moscow, the carrier was flying from Beijing to Perm, with a stopover in Irkutsk. The crew managed to land the falling airplane onto its belly near the village of Pivovarikha 2 km away from the airport. Seven people onboard Il-76 managed to get out of it before it caught on fire and exploded. Strong overloading of the aircraft caused the accident.
July 3, 2001. Passenger aircraft Tu-154 of Vladivostok Avia company, flying from Yekaterinburg to Vladivostok with a stopover in Irkutsk, crashed when coming in for landing. Wrecks of the aircraft were found 20 km away from the airport and 5 km away from the village of Burdakovka. The crash killed 136 passengers and 9 members of the crew. The state committee concluded the reason of the accident was the pilots’ mistake.
Olga Shkurenko
All the Article in Russian as of July 10, 2006
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