The S-7 Airbus 310 tragedy at Irkutsk airport on July 9 claimed 124 lives and left another 70 injured. No official conclusion about what caused the tragedy has yet been made public.
A Russian leading daily, Kommersant, cited a source in the Interstate Aviation Committee August 3 as saying that an engine malfunction had caused the Airbus to slew off the airport's runway and fatally smash through nearby garages.
The lawyers cited such companies as France-based Airbus, America's Pratt & Whitney, which manufactured the engines, and the German Lufthansa Technik, which serviced the plane.
Dmitry Chyorny of Russia's Muranov, Chernyakov and Partners, said: "If the foreign companies are found guilty, the relatives of the crash victims will be able to get damages that exceed those in Russia."
Stuart Dench, managing partner with the London-based law firm Stewart Solicitors, also said there was an opportunity to sue the foreign companies.
Dench said that the company was studying the possibility for the crash victims and their relatives to file suits outside Russia, where compensations could be far higher.
Russia's Transportation Minister Igor Levitin said earlier that engine designers from Pratt & Whitney had joined the investigation into the Airbus crash.
An official from the Interstate Aviation Committee has said that flight recorders had almost been decoded, and the data would underlie the modeling of the plane movement on the runway before the crash.
Commenting on media reports that a reverse mechanism in the Airbus's left engine had gone out of order, the official said that the plane's manual allowed landing with one of the engine's reverse mode turned off.
"Both engines from the crashed plane are intact and will be thoroughly examined," he said.
