Russian investigators are looking into the behavior of the flight crew that was operating the Aeroflot Superjet-100 involved in a deadly accident on May 5, 2019, which costed the lives of 41 people.
“The first error of the pilots was to take off in front of the storm and then, while the situation was complicated but far from catastrophic, they landed instead of burning the kerosene”, explains the newspaper Kommersant quoting a source close to the investigation.
The Russian Investigation Committee (Sledcom) also will also examine the excessive speed during the landing which led to the aircraft bouncing off from the runway before crashing.
According to a source from the Sledcom quoted by the Russian media RBK, the pilots failed to turn off the engines once the plane had landed, and then proceeded to open a cockpit window. Those two facts may have accelerated the propagation of the fire.
In a video posted on Youtube, the captain, Denis Evdokimov, who was the last to leave the aircraft can be seen jumping from a cockpit window.
For the three days preceding the incident at Sheremetyevo, Evdokimov made three flights and spent ten hours in the air, said a source close to Slekdom quoted by RBK. Another source from Aeroflot said that “the pilot had two days of rest before the flight.”
Forty-one people died and eleven were injured after the emergency landing of an Aeroflot Superjet-100 in Sheremetyevo International Airport (SVO), Moscow, on May 5, 2019. The plane, registered RA-89098, was to operate flight SU1492 to Murmansk, northern Russia and was carrying 73 passengers and five crew members. After the plane lost several of its flight systems; the flight crez decided to land back in its departing airport. The loss of radio communications has been attributed to the fact that the aircraft was struck by lightning shortly after takeoff.
Ten people are still hospitalized and are reportedly in stable condition.