The plane crash that killed an entire Russian professional hockey team was caused by pilot error, investigators said today.
The Interstate Aviation Committee said the crash of the Yak-42 plane near the city of Yaroslavl in central Russia on September 7th was caused by one of the pilots accidentally activating the brakes during take-off and then lifting the jet too sharply, causing it to crash.
The plane crashed into the banks of the Volga River, 250km northeast of Moscow killing 44 people on board.
It was one of the worst aviation disasters ever in sports, shocking Russia and the world of hockey, as the dead included 36 players, coaches and staff of the Lokomotiv Yaroslavl hockey team.
The only player who survived the crash later died of burns.
A flight engineer was the sole survivor.
The team had been flying to Minsk in Belarus, to play its opening game of the Kontinental Hockey League season.
Among the dead were Lokomotiv coach and National Hockey League veteran Brad McCrimmon, a Canadian; assistant coach Alexander Karpovtsev, one of the first Russians to have his name etched on the Stanley Cup as a member of the New York Rangers; and Pavol Demitra, who played for the St Louis Blues and the Vancouver
Canucks and was the Slovakian national team captain.
Others killed were Czech players Josef Vasicek, Karel Rachunek and Jan Marek, Swedish goalie Stefan Liv, Latvian defenceman Karlis Skrastins and defenceman Ruslan Salei of Belarus.
The crash raised new concerns about Russia’s aviation safety and prompted the president to suggest replacing all ageing Soviet-era aircraft with Western-made planes.
But industry experts say that recent air disasters have been rooted not simply in planes’ age, but in a combination of other factors, including insufficient crew training, crumbling airports, lax government control and widespread neglect of safety in the pursuit of profits.
AP