Stabiliser caused Moscow crash

The plane came down in a wooded area

Russian accident investigators have confirmed that a faulty tail stabiliser caused the crash of a plane in Moscow on Sunday.

Fourteen people died when the Ilyushin Il-86 jumbo airliner plunged to the ground shortly after taking off from Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport.

The stabiliser was in the wrong position, sending the plane soaring into the sky before it plunged to the ground.

But another key part of the inquiry has been hampered with the revelation that the cockpit voice recorder was empty.

The exact sequence of events leading to the stabiliser's wrong position remains unclear.

(The stabiliser) was not jammed, the stabiliser moved and this was on the recordings

Oleg Yermolov
Inquiry deputy head

The chairman of the inquiry says the stabiliser appears to have been jammed in the wrong position by mechanical failure.

But investigators are still trying to find out whether the pilot may have mistakenly moved it, and the inquiry's deputy head said the stabiliser had definitely moved during the take-off.

"It was not jammed, the stabiliser moved and this was on the (flight) recordings," said Oleg Yermolov, deputy head of the committee investigating the crash.

"We now have to work out whether the pilot activated the stabiliser or whether there were other reasons for it to move."

Conversations

The stabiliser is a small horizontal flap on the top of the aircraft's tail. It helps to control the angle of the plane's nose during flight.

The missing cockpit recordings could have yielded crucial extra clues to what happened. Only conversations between the pilots and air traffic controllers have been recorded, and those tapes will be closely studied by investigators.

Two women survived the crash and are being treated in hospital. They had been in the plane's tail section.

Eyewitnesses said the plane had climbed "almost vertically" to a height of about 200 metres (650 feet) before crashing.

The Pulkovo Airlines plane - bound for St Petersburg - came down in a forest about 700 metres (2,300 feet) from the airport.