Ukraine's state-run aircraft engine developer Ivchenko-Progress (Zaporizhia) is to ask the Russian government to cancel a state commission's decision on the causes of the crash of a Russian Air Force An-124 Ruslan in Irkutsk in December 1997, as they have proved the commission's conclusions are inconsistent.
Chief Designer of Ivchenko-Progress Design Bureau Fedor Muravchenko said this at a press conference at Interfax-Ukraine on Monday.
He noted that the act of the state commission, which was made up exclusively of Russian military men, said that the failure of the Ruslan’s two D-18T engines, which were developed by Ivchenko-Progress, and the failure of a valve in the third engine were to blame for the aircraft’s crash into a residential house.
At the same time, the chief designer said that the chance of the simultaneous failure of two, or even three engines of the aircraft is estimated at one per million. That is why, he noted, the engine developer, which was not invited to participate in the commission, was sure that an external factor was behind the tragedy, and that this external factor was the excessive volume of water in the fuel.
“Everybody believed that we conjured this up,” he said.
According to Muravchenko, over 10 years of comprehensive tests conducted by Ivchenko-Progress they have discovered hitherto unknown properties of the interaction of the fuel and the so-called intramolecular solution, as well as new properties of the fuel, leading under certain conditions to the formation of ice on an engine’s twill filters, which may result in their shutdown.
“We have disproved all the arguments of the state commission. We believe that the act [of the state commission] should be canceled,” he said adding: “Now, our conclusions should be either refuted or accepted.”
