MOSCOW. Oct 17 (Interfax) - The braking in takeoff led to the crash of a Yakovlev Yak-42 passenger jet at the Yaroslavl Tunoshna Airport, which killed the Lokomotiv ice hockey team, the newspaper Kommersant said.
"Experts said that one of the pilots pushed the brakes. In that case, the captain should have stopped the jet. The last experiment simulating the crash will be made on Tuesday to confirm the pilot mistake theory," the newspaper said.
Yakovlev Design Bureau test pilot Vasily Sevastyanov made a statement after six experiments, in which pilots simulated the braking in takeoff.
He said that the experiments confirmed "the presence of a certain braking force, which prevented the takeoff."
"We are already confident that the mistakes of captain Andrei Solomentsev and copilot Igor Zhevelov led to the tragedy, which claimed 45 lives," Kommersant said.
"They passed three takeoff distances and ran for almost three kilometers instead of 900 meters usual for Yak-42," a participant in the experiments told the newspaper.
"The takeoff time was exceeded by approximately three times, while it usually takes 25-30 seconds to take off. The crew did not find the braking source within 1.5 minutes but stubbornly continued the takeoff instead of stopping the flight," he said.
After the takeoff, the crew of the Yak-42 jet of Yak Service Airline made another tragic mistake, the experts said.
After they had left behind the runway and took off with difficulty, the pilots instinctively pulled the wheel for climbing up. As a result, the jet's nose lifted by more than 19 degrees, the jet lost speed and fell into a flat spin.
"They should have pushed the wheel for an almost horizontal flight and to gain a larger speed," the experts said.
Their opponents called for a more thorough examination of the Yak-42 brakes for possible overheating or defects, which might have led to the self-induced blocking of the brakes.
"The main argument of the supporters of the technical failure theory is their estimates, which showed that a pilot pushing the brakes and having no firm support under his feet was physically unable to pull the wheel so hard that it climbed to the impermissible angle," he said.
The Interstate Aviation Committee demanded that all the Russian airlines using Yak-42 "must instruct their pilots about the correct position of feet on pedals in various stages of flights and the regulation of pilot seats," the newspaper said.