Keflavik, Iceland, the mecca for airliner crosswind flight testing, could become more difficult to access in the wake of a belly landing by a Sukhoi Superjet 100 during certification expansion flight testing by the manufacturer in July 2013. 
The Icelandic Transportation Safety Board (ITSB) issued nine recommendations in its final report on the accident, one of which calls for the country’s air navigation service provider, Isavia, to create an “in-house” task group to develop formal procedures for any flight-testing and flight certification activities at the airport. Another recommendation calls for the Icelandic Transport Authority to set up a procedure for approval of such testing. 

The aircraft touched down initially on the rear portion of the belly, followed by the engine nacelles. Credit: ITSB


The actions stem from errors uncovered in ITSB’s analysis of the Superjet 100 gear-up landing and runway excursion on Runway 11 by a fatigued crew at Keflavik at 5:23 a.m. on July 21, 2013. The flight-test team had been located at Keflavik for a month to expand the aircraft’s certified capabilities to include Category IIIA landings, precision instrument approaches conducted on autopilot down to 100 ft. or less above the runway. 
During the accident flight test, the fourth flight of the day, the pilots were to evaluate the aircraft’s automatic flight control system performance in a go-around from an altitude of 2-3 ft. above the runway, with the right engine shut down and a crosswind greater than 19.5 kt. The Superjet 100 was initially certified by Russia’s Interstate Aviation Committee in January 2011, and the type certificate was validated by the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) in February 2012. 

The aircraft received extensive structural damage after skidding along the runway and ground after a failed go-around at Keflavik. Credit: ITSB


During the go-around, the right-seat pilot took manual control of the aircraft, per the test procedure, but advanced the throttle for the inoperative right engine, rather than the left engine. The aircraft initially climbed and the captain called for gear up, but as airspeed bled off, the Superjet settled into the runway, its aft lower belly hitting first. The aircraft skidded down the runway on its belly and engine cowlings, coming to rest 535 ft. off the end of the runway. The three pilots and two flight-test engineers exited the aircraft via escape slides. One of the engineers suffered minor injuries during the evacuation, while the aircraft received “extensive structural damage” in the accident.