New clues to cause of Moscow crash

A wrongly set stabiliser in the tail of the plane caused the crash, experts say

MOSCOW, Russia -- A recording of the last moments on board a Russian wide-bodied jet confirmed an ill-positioned tail stabiliser caused it to crash, killing 14 people.

This could have been a malfunction or pilot error, investigators said.

The Pulkovo Airlines Ilyushin Il-86 to crash came down shortly after take-off from Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport on Sunday. Two air hostesses were pulled out of the charred wreckage alive.

Experts said the pilot may have mistakenly moved the jet's horizontal stabiliser -- a small wing mounted on the tail which controls the angle of the plane's nose -- into the wrong position, causing the jet to make a steep climb at high speed.

EXTRA INFORMATION • The Il-86: A Russian workhorse

The stabiliser, located on a plane's tail, controls the pitch of the aircraft's nose in flight. A sudden ascent at too steep an angle could cause an aircraft to stall, meaning it loses the lift on its wings.

Earlier theories had suggested the stabiliser had jammed shortly after take-off.

"It was not jammed, the stabiliser moved and this was on the recordings," Oleg Yermolov, deputy head of the committee investigating the crash, told Reuters.

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

Yermolov added that the voice recorder on board the jumbo airliner was empty.

One of four engines from the doomed Il-86 lies amid the wreckage

"The conversations of the crew were not recorded, the tape is empty. But the conversations between the crew and the controllers were recorded because the air controllers' recorder was switched on," he said.

It was the first crash of an Ilyushin 86, the wide-bodied workhorse of the Russian passenger fleet which can carry up to 350 people.

Seen as Russia's most reliable aircraft, some 120 Il-86 planes are in use in the former Soviet Union, mostly on high-density routes and charter flights.

The crash came a day after another Soviet-era plane, an Su-27 fighter jet, ploughed through a crowd of spectators at an air show in western Ukraine, killing 83 people. (Full story)