The Interstate Aviation Commission's conclusions threated S& Airlines with huge lawsuits, one of which, for damages to private garages, has already been settled out of court.
Photo: Andrey Fedorov
| Other Photos |
 |
|
 |
Blame Placed on Pilots in Irkutsk Crash
The Interstate Aviation Committee has officially completed its study of the crash of the S7 (formerly Siberian Airlines) Flight 778 after landing in Irkutsk on July 3. The government committee's experts recreated the events leading up to the catastrophe in a report that Kommersant published on August 3 and listed “involuntary” actions by the pilots as the cause of the crash. S7 disputed the committee's findings.
Although the IAC experts knew how the plane crashed three weeks within three weeks, they then spent three months conciliating their conclusions. They held discussions with the Russian Transportation Ministry, owner of the A310 aircraft S7, developer of the aircraft Airbus and developer of the craft's engine American firm Pratt & Whitney. After that, the IAC reached the conclusion that the fault in the crash of the airplane and the deaths of 124 people on board it belongs to the plane's pilots, who also died in the crash. Alexey Morozov, chairman of the IAC technical commission, presented the commission's findings to Russian Transportation Minister Igor Levitin yesterday.
According to Morozov, “the erroneous and uncontrolled actions of the crew led to the catastrophe.” The commission determined that the commander of the crew, as he turned on the right reserve engine on landing, “involuntarily moved the throttle lever of the left, deactivated engine.” As a result, the left engine exerted “significant forward thrust” and the airplane, instead of slowing down, began to speed up. At the same time, “there was a lack of sufficient control and knowledge” of the working of the engine and speed of movement on the part of the second pilot. The commission concluded that the pilots had time to “recognize the situation” and put the left engine on “low gas” or turn it off altogether after the mistake was made, but that was not done.
After reading the report, Kommersant contacted Oleg Ermolov, deputy director of the IAC for commentary. However, when asked why Pilot 1st Class Sergey Shibanov, who had over 10,000 hours flight time, made a mistake that was unforgivable even for a novice, essentially mixing up the gas and the brakes, Ermolov was unable to answer. “For an explanation of a person's actions that are deemed illogical, you have to ask a psychologist, not an investigator,” he demurred.
That argument will not likely satisfy of the victims of the crash and their relatives, or their lawyers. Lawyers from the American firm Speiser Krause, which is representing the crash victims and their relatives, hold that the cause of the crash was faults in the reversing system of the A310. Speiser Krause managing partner Arthur Ballen said that his experience in assessing similar crashes suggests that the reversing system is a weak point in all Airbus aircraft. Ballen said that Speiser Krause intends file large-scale lawsuits in the name of the victims and their relatives against companies in the United States and Great Britain that make parts for the A310. The details of the A310 reversing system are well known to the IAC as well as the lawyers, of course.
The 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 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.
Thus, the plane's commander did commit an error, but writing it off as “illogical” would be incorrect, pilots say. Pilots questioned by Kommersant say that the cause of the crash should be attributed to the error of the dispatcher and the unfortunate design of the plane's cockpit: the controls for the throttle and the reversing system can be pressed simultaneously when reaching for only one of them, especially in an emergency situation. On an aircraft of that class, it would be possible electronically to prevent the activation of the forward throttle while turning on the reversing system.
“We consider the investigation carried out by the IAC incomplete and the experts' conclusions incorrect,” Ilya Novokhatsky, an official S& representative, told Kommersant. “There is no more than 10 percent of the truth in that document. The IAC simply took the path of least resistance by blaming our pilots for everything. The IAC itself certifies airports and the airplanes supplied to Russia, so the experts don't want to place responsibility on the equipment or dispatchers. Pilots are the only link in the system that the committee does not control. The catastrophe can be blamed on them, all the more so since they are dead and cannot stand up for themselves.”
Sergey Dyupin
All the Article in Russian as of Nov. 23, 2006
|
|
|
