Flight engineer mixed everything up

On 30 June 1990, an Il-62M operated by Aeroflot took off from Moscow bound for Yakutsk. There were 99 passengers and 10 crew members on board.

It was a night landing. After touchdown, the captain called for reverse thrust. However, the flight engineer mixed everything up and advanced two of the four engines to takeoff thrust instead. The automatic system then locked the spoilers at 15°. As a result, instead of slowing down, the aircraft began to accelerate. At first, no one in the cockpit noticed the increase in engine thrust. Seeing that the speed was not decreasing but actually growing, the pilots applied emergency braking and held the wheels locked, which was contrary to the aircraft operating manual. The flight engineer then reduced thrust on the engines in takeoff mode and eventually shut all the engines down.

By that time, the aircraft had reached a speed of about 270 km/h and was only 655 meters from the end of the runway. With the wheels locked, the tires began to burst. Because of this, and also because all the engines were now shut down, the speed dropped to about 200 km/h. But the runway had already ended and the airliner overran onto the unpaved area.

It then crossed the runway end safety area, hit obstacles and broke apart. There was no fire. All three landing gear legs collapsed, and the fuselage broke in three places. Nevertheless, nobody was killed. Two people received serious injuries and four others sustained minor injuries.

The investigation commission concluded that the crew was fully responsible for the accident. The flight engineer, due to insufficient professional skills, made an error in handling the engines and spoilers during landing. This led to the unintentional and unexpected selection of forward takeoff thrust on engines No. 1 and 4 instead of reverse thrust.

The crew as a whole was poorly organized and failed to eliminate the consequences of their colleague’s mistake. The reasons for this included:

- the high verbal workload imposed on the crew during landing by the applicable procedures;

- the operator’s failure to implement the Ministry of Civil Aviation’s recommendations on forming crews with regard to psychophysiological and socio-psychological compatibility;

- failure to comply with the ministry’s requirement to train crews in handling abnormal situations in realistic aerodrome conditions.