The disaster occurred 16 years ago today.

Exactly 16 years ago today, S7 Airlines Flight 778 crashed while landing at Irkutsk International Airport (IKT) in the Russian Federation, killing five crew members and 120 passengers. S7 Airlines Flight 778 was a regularly scheduled domestic passenger flight from Moscow Domodedovo Airport (DME) to Irkutsk International Airport (IKT) in Siberia.

The aircraft used for the flight was a 19-year-old Airbus A310-300 with the registration F-OGYP. Powered by two Pratt & Whitney PW4152 engines, the 244-seat plane was delivered new to Pan Am in June 1987 and later to Delta Air Lines following Pan Am's bankruptcy in 1991. The aircraft then went to the Russian national flag carrier Aeroflot in March 1995 and then to S7 in July 2004.

At the time of the crash, it had accumulated 52,000 flight hours during more than 10,000 flights. After its previous flight a day earlier, the plane was cleared for operations despite having six defects, including a deactivated left engine thrust reverser state.

The captain of S7 Airlines Flight 778 was 45-year-old Sergey Gennadievich Shibanov, who had been working for S7 since June 2005. He had 10,611 flight hours, including 1,056 hours on the Airbus A310. The first officer on the flight was 48-year-old Vladimir Grigoryevich Chernykh, who had 9,971 flight hours, 158 of them on the Airbus A310. Together with the pilots were six flight attendants and 195 passengers, including more than a dozen children flying to Irkutsk for a vacation on nearby Lake Baikal.

On July 9, 2006, S7 Airlines Flight 778 took off from Moscow's Domodedovo airport at 20:17 for the 5hr 45min flight to Irkutsk. Weather conditions at Irkutsk were reported to be poor, with rain, clouds, and scattered thunderstorms. As a backup, the nearby Bratsk Airport (BTK) was selected as an alternative in case they could not land at IKT.

As the plane reached the point to start its descent into Irkutsk, they contacted air traffic control (ATC) to obtain clearance to descend to 18,700 feet. During the descent, the crew opted to turn on the plane's engine anti-icing system. When permitted to descend to 6,800 feet, the decision was made to turn on the wing's anti-icing system for at least three minutes. The latest weather bulletin said the airport's visibility was 11,400 feet with a cloud base of between 560 and 620 feet and light rain.

After receiving the weather bulletin, the crew asked for permission to land and was told they were clear to land on runway 30. During the final approach, the crew went through their checklist while configuring the plane for landing. As the aircraft exited the clouds, the autopilot system was disengaged, and the crew noted that they had slightly deviated from the flight path. To correct this, they made a slight elevator deflection which momentarily increased the plane's air speed, causing the sink rate alarm to sound.

At 06:43 local time, the plane touched down on runway 30 at a speed of 132 knots. Captain Shibanov armed the spoilers and engaged the aircraft's auto-brake to slow mode. The right engine reverse was set to the maximum while the left engine reverse was left untouched. The captain then pushed the right engine reverse thrust to decrease the deceleration rate. Suddenly the takeoff warning alarm sounded, but the pilots shrugged it off, believing it to be a malfunction. The captain then contacted the control tower to say that they had landed, and he was instructed to exit the runway left at exit 6.

For some reason, the plane failed to slow down as it should have and began gaining speed. Now having already used up a large part of the runway, they realized that they were running out and had only 2,600 feet of runway left to stop the plane.

Captain Shibanov asked the first officer what was happening, and he said that the aircraft's speed was increasing. The captain then told him to deploy the right engine thrust reverser again to the maximum. At the same time, the captain tried to slow the plane down by applying maximum brakes.

While the plane was slowing down, they were running out of runway and began swerving to the left. To counter this, the rudder pedal was used, forcing the plane to drift right as the aircraft exited the runway at 110 mph. At this point, the captain told the first officer to shut down both engines as the left engine clipped an antenna of the airport's localizer beacon and the fences surrounding it.

The plane continued across a paved road, smashing into a concrete perimeter fence, collapsing the nose wheel landing gear. As the aircraft's left wing broke off, the fuel ignited, creating a massive fireball as the plane struck a group of garages before finally stopping.

With the emergency lights not working and the plane quickly filling with smoke, panic set in as the passengers tried to find a way out of the burning aircraft. Many of those in the front of the plane managed to escape, but others further back were not so fortunate. Most of the fatalities in the crash were due to carbon monoxide poisoning.

Russia's Interstate Aviation Committee (MAK) immediately opened an investigation into the crash, working with representatives from Irkutsk Airport, Aeroflot, and S7 Airlines. Airbus also sent a team of experts from France together with investigators from the French Bureau of Inquiry and Analysis for Civil Aviation Safety (BEA).

#OTD in 2006: S7 Airlines Flight 778, an A310, crashes in Irkutsk (Russia) killing 128 of 203 aboard. During the rollout after landing, crew did not follow procedure for braking with one engine reverser deactivated, leading the jet to hit a concrete barricade and starting a fire. pic.twitter.com/5Zb9C9aYtK

— Air Safety #OTD by Francisco Cunha (@OnDisasters) July 8, 2020

The black box data recorders were recovered and sent to Moscow for decryption. All data, including the cockpit voice recording, was successfully downloaded and good quality. Before any findings were made public, the press speculated that a brake failure must have been the cause. When speaking about the accident before flying from Moscow to Irkutsk, Russian Transport Minister Igor Levitin told reporters:

"The runway was wet after rain, and a technical failure should be considered as one of the causes of the crash."

According to Airbus, the plane had an in-depth C check, a thorough overhaul of the aircraft, on July 12, 2005, in Frankfurt, followed by a maintenance check on June 1, 2006. While the press speculated on a brake failure being the cause, several Russian pilots said the investigation needed to look at reverser-thrust asymmetry.

The aircraft's maintenance log revealed the Airbus maintenance and that, since July 2006, 50 defects had been reported. Of these, 29 were addressed before the plane's next flight, while the others were rectified within the time allowed.

Two problems not fixed before the crash were the inoperable state of the left thrust reverser and a failure of the retraction systems on one of the flaps. While these two issues were present, the plane's brakes were in good condition, which ruled out that a brake failure was the cause. Other than the inoperable left thrust reverser, the aircraft had no further issues that would explain why it overshot the runway.

What the investigation into Flight 778 flight did reveal was that there had been other incidences of a deactivated thrust reverser suddenly causing forward motion during landing. A Mahan Air Airbus A310-300 with a deactivated thrust reverser overshot the runway while landing in Tehran. Other aircraft, including a United Airlines DC-10, also suffered a similar fate when one of the three engines remained in forward thrust during reverse thrust after landing. In both the Air Mahan and the United Airlines flights, the cause was attributed to pilot error.

When the MAK's final report into the crash of S7 Flight 778 was released in June 2007, it stated the following reasons as being to blame for the crash:

According to the report, the crew had enough time to prevent overshooting the runway but failed to do so. Inadequate monitoring and call-outs of airplane speed and engine parameters by the co-pilot made it impossible for the crew to perform the necessary actions, either by moving the left throttle back to idle or shutting down the engines. The crew had enough time to recognize the situation.

The MAK report issued 57 recommendations to the Russian Aviation authorities, S7 Airlines Airbus, EASA, and other certifying authorities that included:

Sadly both the pilot and co-pilot died in the crash and could not give their account of what happened to the investigators.

Journalist - Mark is an experienced travel journalist having published work in the industry for more than seven years. His enthusiasm for aviation news and wealth of experience lends itself to some excellent insight, with his work cited in Forbes amongst other publications. Based in Alicante, Spain.