Accident Sequence
A four-engine aircraft departed Moscow-Domodedovo Airport at 1237 local time. It carried 99 passengers and 10 crew members. The flight to Yakutsk International Airport lasted 5 hours and 42 minutes without incident. The crew initiated the approach to Yakutsk during nighttime. The aircraft landed on runway 23, which has a length of 3,300 meters. After touchdown, the flight engineer selected reverse thrust on engines number 2 and 3 only. Engines number 1 and 4 continued to run at takeoff power. The pilots took several seconds to identify the anomaly, at which point the aircraft's speed was between 265 and 270 km/h, with 655 meters of runway remaining.
The captain executed an emergency braking procedure. All tires burst, and the aircraft overran the runway at 200 km/h. It lost its undercarriage and came to rest 397 meters beyond the runway end, broken into three sections. All 109 occupants were evacuated. Six occupants sustained injuries, two of which were serious. The aircraft was deemed a write-off.
Investigation Findings
The probable cause, as stated by the official investigation, was an error by the flight engineer in selecting reverse thrust on only two engines. Several contributing factors were identified: the spoilers could not deploy due to insufficient reverse thrust activation; the crew was disorganized during the landing; poor crew coordination; the flight engineer's mistake was recognized too late; there was heavy verbal exchange during the landing phase; and the flight engineer had insufficient professional skills.