by d_silin | 2025-05-13 16:25:26+00:00
I read entire article and here is my summary:

Short answer: Pilot training deficiency was the major contributing factor, Aeroflot the party responsible, but other factors contributed:

- After the accident, the MAK sought to verify how much time was actually spent flying in Direct Mode during initial and recurrent training at Aeroflot, but they ran up against a brick wall of silence.

- The MAK acquired data from seven Direct Mode reversion events between 2015 and 2018, including six from Aeroflot and one from another Russian airline, and the results painted a dismal picture of Russian pilots’ ability to handle this type of emergency.

"Manufacturer was not blameless either"

- at the time of the accident the flight crew operations manual (FCOM, a Sukhoi product) contained descriptions of Airbus controls laws instead of SSJ control laws...

- UAC calculated that the probability of a Direct Mode reversion should be approximately 1 per 1.64 million flight hours... By 2022, the number of known Direct Mode reversions had risen to 21, for a rate of 1 per 63,000 flight hours

"Notable pilot errors"

- once he initiated a descent, the original trim setting became wildly inappropriate for the flight conditions...

Pilots ignored “GO AROUND, WINDSHEAR AHEAD" warning

- pitch angle -1.7 ...when the plane touched down on the runway. But instead of applying the recovery maneuver described in the FCOM, Yevdokimov suddenly reversed his input from full nose up to full nose down.

"Stress factors aggravated situation"

- Yevdokimov beginning to speak before pressing the push-to-talk button, and releasing the button before he was done — a known sign of elevated stress.

"Random factors were not on their side either"

- In an unfortunate coincidence, Yevdokimov’s request overlapped with a transmission from another aircraft on the standard frequency and the controller never heard it..

- The SSJ’s landing gear, which was designed and produced by French company Safran. As it turns out, the second impact fell into a gray area where the load was sufficient to break the fuse pins attaching the forward end of the landing gear crossarm to the wing box rear spar, but not the fuse pins for the drag brace or crossbeam.

"Some desperate heroics prevented the worst-case scenario like in Saudia Flight 163"

- Exercising her prerogative, Senior Flight Attendant Kseniya Fogel’ stood up from her seat as soon as the aircraft stopped and opened the R1 door without waiting for a command by the pilots. By 18:30:46, just eight seconds after the plane came to a stop, the door opened and the slide began deploying...

- Video evidence showed that within one second of the first passenger leaving the plane, and possibly even earlier, the fire breached the fuselage and began spreading into the cabin itself....

- Also still on the airplane was the passenger from seat 12A, who encountered First Officer Kuznetsov just outside the cockpit and decided to stay to help more passengers

"Final words and predictable aftermath"

- In its final report, the MAK reserved its harshest words for Aeroflot.

- The MAK’s final report contains 49 recommendations to improve everything. But despite the passage of more than 6 years since the crash, the section of the report listing safety actions taken to date contains only one entry, concerning an update to Russia’s USSR-era airport fire rescue standards