Twenty-five years ago, the largest plane crash in the history of aviation in Tajikistan occurred in Khorog. Sputnik Tajikistan remembers this tragic date.
Flight of the Yak-40 - everything went according to plan
It was piloted by a crew that included commander Mels Siyarov, co-pilot Yuri Demin and flight mechanic Nizomiddin Buriev.
Flight attendant Kayumov also worked in the cabin, and Evgeniy Babajanov was the squad’s navigator.
Civil war in Tajikistan
At that time, there was a civil war in Tajikistan, and Khorog was captured by militants. Several hundred civilians gathered at the airport, wanting to leave the city on the same Yak-40 flight.
During the landing, armed militants intervened in the situation. Threatening with weapons, they began to direct the seating process at their own discretion, trying to put as many people on board as possible. The crew of the plane tried to reason with them, pointing out that the plane was not designed for such a number of passengers, but in vain.
A total of 81 passengers boarded the plane, although the plane was designed for only 28 seats. This is what caused the plane crash.
The board turned out to be heavily overloaded - the maximum take-off weight was exceeded by as much as three tons. The crew refused to fly. However, after the threat of execution, the pilots were forced to agree.
The dispatcher, who was supposed to control the landing, was not even allowed near the ramp by armed people.
However, not everyone was able to board the plane: the militants sent some people back to the airport.
Yak-40 plane crash in Khorog
The overload was felt during the first minutes of takeoff. A plane crash was inevitable. The plane covered almost the entire runway - 1,629 meters. The Yak-40 was unable to get off the ground and rolled out of the runway.
After this, the accelerated aircraft crashed into the parapet of a shallow ditch with its left strut, and then collided with a stone 60 cm high.
After another 30 meters, the left wheel of the Yak-40 fell into a ravine and collapsed, and the right one hit a meter-high concrete pillbox, after which the plane with all the passengers crashed into the ravine of the Pyanj River.
Consequences of the Yak-40 plane crash
The plane crash killed 82 passengers and crew members, including 14 children. The bodies of 80 dead were found directly at the site of the Yak-40 crash. Surprisingly, six people were found alive.
Two crew members later died in hospital, in particular 36-year-old flight mechanic Nizomiddin Buriev, who was taken to a hospital in Dushanbe in serious condition. Dozens of people from all parts of the city came to say goodbye to him.
This is the largest disaster on the territory of Tajikistan and in the history of Yak-40 aircraft. Immediately after the incident, all passenger flights in Khorog were stopped until the end of the civil war.
8. Disaster in Zhulyany
December 1974. Due to difficult weather conditions, the AN-24 pilot did not see the concrete fence, the plane rammed the structure, and after that the car flew into a railway embankment. Of the 55 people on board, only 7 survived.
7th place. Tragedy near Chernigov
In the same year as the previous disaster, but already in May, an An-24 crashed near Chernigov. As a result, 52 people died. The cause of this incident could not be determined. According to the flight recorder, there was an unexpected, sharp tilt of the yoke to the right after the autopilot was turned off. The plane went into a tailspin, despite the actions taken by the pilots, it was not possible to get out of it.
6th place. Disaster over the Black Sea
October 4, 2001. Near Crimea, a Russian Tu-154 crashed into the sea with 66 passengers and 12 crew members. It was initially assumed that it was a terrorist attack. But some time later, experts reported that the cause of the crash was damage caused from outside.
By coincidence, military exercises were taking place in Crimea on that day. And due to the negligence of the military, a missile fired from an anti-aircraft gun exploded 15 meters above the plane. Square refused to admit her guilt, but later experts from the Ministry of Defense came to the conclusion that the Tu-154 was not hit by a Ukrainian missile. The criminal investigation was stopped and the case was closed.
5th place. Crash at Sknilovsky airfield
The disaster at the air show at Sknilovsky airfield shocked the world. The Su-27 pilot decided to perform a complex element with a turn towards the spectator. The plane got out of control and flew into people. 77 people died, including 28 children. According to other sources, there are more victims. Over 500 people were injured. The four generals responsible for commands for the elements were acquitted, and the pilots received several years in prison.
4 revenge. Plane crash near Dneprodzerzhinsk
In 1979, this tragedy claimed the lives of football players of the Tashkent team Pakhtakor, who were heading to a match in Minsk. Their plane collided with the same Tu-134, which was flying from Chelyabinsk to Chisinau.
The controllers who were in contact with 12 aircraft that day were found guilty. In view of Brezhnev's flight to Crimea for vacation, one of the three air corridors had to be open. Traffic in the remaining two was extremely dense. The 21-year-old dispatcher directed two planes towards each other at right angles. The second dispatcher noticed a dangerous situation and ordered to lower the altitude, but it was heard not by the Tu-134, but by the Il-72.
The first information about the crash appeared in the media only three days later. And the Pakhtakor football club itself was kept in the top Soviet league for several more years, without taking into account the results of their games. The disaster claimed the lives of 94 people.
3rd place. Mistakes of the past.
The same tragedy as with two Tu-134s occurred 6 years later. In 1985, over Zolochiv in the Lviv region, a military An-26, transporting senior leadership of the Carpathian Air Force, collided with a Tu-134, which had passengers on board.
The cause of this accident was the third aircraft - An-24. At the Lvov airport, the dispatcher simply confused this plane on the radar screen with the An-26 and gave control to his partner, who directed the Tu-134 into the same corridor with the military.
Coming out of the fog, at a short distance from each other, the two aircraft attempted to diverge. The military An-26, in order to avoid colliding with the Tu, went into a tailspin, but even this did not help. The Tu-134 collapsed in the air, the An-26 exploded on the ground. As in the case of the football team, 94 people died.
2nd place. Destruction in the air.
The disaster near Kharkov took second place in terms of the number of deaths. In 1972, the car broke into pieces in the air.
The debris scattered across the vast area between the two villages was collected by soldiers. According to eyewitnesses, everything around turned red, and the smell of blood was in the air. As soon as the bodies were collected and identified from documents, they were immediately burned.
The plane took the lives of 122 people. Among them was the famous parodist Viktor Chistyakov, who was heading on tour. According to some reports, some time before the departure, he seemed to have a premonition of death - the artist repaid all his debts and signed the photographs in the album. Lev Leshchenko also received an offer from Chistyakov to fly with him, but refused due to urgent matters.
Tupolev's associate Joseph Fridlyander began to determine the cause of the accident, who noticed that the wreckage was full of cracks from worn-out metal. After this incident, the An-10A, affectionately called “Big Anna” (as its designers called it), never took to the skies again.
1 place. The biggest disaster.
The largest disaster in terms of the number of deaths in Ukraine is considered to be the disaster near Donetsk, in which 170 people died.
August 22, 2006. Flight Anapa - St. Petersburg, Tu-154 plane crashed near Donetsk. Flight 612 carried 160 passengers and 10 crew members. No one survived.
According to official data, the pilots decided to go around the storm front from above, instead of going around the cloud from the side. But the crew did not correctly assess the forces of nature and the air flow lifted the car sharply upward, and then it went into a flat tailspin. Three minutes later the plane crashed into a ravine.
Before the collision, with one engine running, the pilots made every attempt to save the plane, but, according to eyewitnesses, it fell at a distance of several hundred meters to the ground, rotating around its axis, like an autumn leaf.
According to our reliable source, the commission has already established that the plane began to accelerate along the runway with the parking brake not turned off. This device - analogous to a handbrake in a car - is used only when parked. The engine power is quite enough for the aircraft to move off while on the parking brake (just as some forgetful motorists start with the handbrake) and drive along the taxiway to the runway. But accelerating to takeoff speed is already becoming problematic.
MK Help Meanwhile
Errors when pilots do not turn off the parking brake, although rare, still happen. Thus, in 2005, a Boeing of the American company Kalitta Air was unable to take off at Khabarovsk Airport because the crew did not remove the landing gear from the parking brake. As a result, the wheels collapsed and their fragments got into the engines. Fortunately, there were no serious consequences then.
In addition, the source told MK that, as follows from the transcript of the Yak-42 voice recorder, immediately before takeoff, the aircraft commander Andrei Solomentsev ordered the co-pilot Igor Zhevelov to take control, citing poor health.
It was the commander who had to turn off the parking brake. But, perhaps, at the moment of transfer of control, the pilots simply forgot about it and did not pay attention to the corresponding signal on the instrument panel (it is not duplicated by the sound signal).
It is possible that when the Yak-42 began to accelerate for takeoff and could not reach the required speed, the pilots noticed an error and turned off the brake. By the way, theoretically, flight engineer Alexander Sizov, who survived the plane crash, could have noticed that the parking brake was not turned off, although during takeoff he is no less loaded with work than the commander.
Cabin of the Yak-42. Parking brake handle. Photo: Anton Bannikov.
Why the crew decided to continue the takeoff rather than apply emergency braking can only be speculated. Perhaps the pilots hoped that the length of the runway would be enough for them - the plane took off from half the runway, which is 1.5 km, while the Yak-42 needs 800 meters for takeoff. But it turned out to be too late. As a result, the plane took off from the ground (it drove the rear landing gear about 400 meters along the grass). This in itself would not have caused the tragedy, but the plane did not have time to gain a safe altitude and got caught on the lighthouse mast, which led to the destruction of the airliner.
According to MK, an official conclusion on the causes of the disaster could be prepared as early as Wednesday. Chairman of the Interstate Aviation Committee Tatyana Anodina reported to Prime Minister Vladimir Putin that the plane was fully operational and even “one-time commands indicating aircraft failures have not yet been identified on the parametric recorder recording.” In addition, according to her, before takeoff, the crew checked all the plane’s control channels and made sure they were working properly, the plane was not overloaded, and the weather conditions were normal.
Nevertheless, our source suggested that in the official conclusions that will be announced, “the commission, for purely ethical reasons, will try not to place all the blame on the crew, but to find what could have broken down there.” Because the pilots themselves became victims of the disaster.
The Yak-40 plane crashed in the evening in Tashkent. Earlier it was reported that the An-24 plane crashed.
37 people died in the plane crash - 32 passengers and 5 crew members. This is stated in a government message released in Tashkent late on Tuesday evening. Previously, information was received about 36 deaths.
The plane belonged to the Uzbekistan Airways company (Uzbekistan Airways).
According to this message, at 19:27 local time, a Yak-40 plane flying on a Termez-Tashkent flight crashed during landing near Tashkent airport.
“It fell on the runway and exploded,” Tashkent airport told Reuters.
The plane was operating flight 1154 Termez-Tashkent.
“Black boxes” were found at the crash site of the Yak-40 plane at Tashkent airport.
The Yak-40 plane crashed onto the runway in close proximity to residential areas of the city. The crash site is separated from nearby houses by no more than 100 meters. There are no reports of casualties among the population. The area where the plane crashed has been cordoned off by police.
According to forensic experts, the bodies of all the victims were badly burned.
In particular, it became known that during landing, instead of the long-range drive, the crew landed on the short-range drive. Moreover, at an altitude of 60 m, the pilots turned on the reverse - the braking system, which should be activated only when the aircraft’s wheels touch the runway, since when the reverse is turned on, the flaps in the nozzles close.
When the crew realized their mistake, they tried to gain altitude, but they no longer had the required 30 seconds that are needed after the reverse is removed. The plane passed almost the entire runway at an altitude of 60 meters, thinking that this was the beginning of the runway.
The plane, having flown the entire length of the runway, crashed into a concrete fence at a height of 2 m. For reasons that have not yet been established, the Yak-40 chassis never touched the ground. Having broken through the fence, the plane caught fire and crashed into the Kara-Su canal.
According to Reuters, parts of the victims are scattered over a large area near the Tashkent airport. The agency's correspondent witnessed how, a few hours after the disaster, rescuers collected parts of the bodies of the victims into large bags.
There is heavy fog in the airport area, but airport officials say visibility was sufficient for the plane to land.
As the Prosecutor General of Uzbekistan Rashitjon Kadyrov said, the crashed Yak-40, when landing at an altitude of two meters, lost its landing gear, it hit the concrete fence of the runway and exploded. Previously, fog was considered the main cause of the disaster.
The General Prosecutor's Office of the Republic opened a criminal case on the fact of the plane crash under Article 260, Part 3, paragraphs “a” and “b”, of the Criminal Code of the Republic - “violation of traffic safety rules and operation of railway, sea, river or air transport, resulting in human casualties.” victims,” Kadyrov said.
Speaking about the technical condition of the aircraft, Rashitjon Kadyrov said that the aircraft was produced in 1975, its service life was 38 thousand hours, and at the time of the disaster 37 thousand had been worked. The last time the plane was repaired was in 1999 in Minsk. At the same time, more than a thousand hours of engine life remained, the Prosecutor General noted.
According to him, the plane was flown by an experienced crew. The crew commander, Alexander Aleksanov, born in 1960, a native of the Kemerovo region, had flight experience since September 16, 1977, Kadyrov said.
More than a hundred people have already been questioned in the case. Personal belongings of passengers were confiscated from the scene of the incident and appropriate examinations are being carried out. The aircraft wreckage will be evacuated to an aircraft hangar, where it will be further examined.
A government commission has been created to investigate the circumstances and causes of the disaster, which has already begun work.
The leadership of Uzbekistan expressed condolences to the families and friends of the victims.
The representative of the State Civil Aviation Service (SCAS) Vladimir Masenkov said that Uzbekistan Airlines “is one of the strongest airlines in the CIS after the collapse of the USSR.”
“It’s very unfortunate that such a disaster occurred in this airline,” Masenkov said.
According to an employee of the representative office, the IAC will deal with the circumstances of the Yak-40 crash in Tashkent. The IAC includes specialists from all CIS countries. The Baltic countries are represented on the committee by observers.
The crew and passengers of the Yak-40 plane - 37 people - were burned alive in a plane crash on the tarmac of Tashkent airport.
The half-filled fuel tanks exploded, leaving no chance for passengers and crew to survive.
According to preliminary data, there were no Russian citizens on board the Uzbek Airlines Yak-40 plane that crashed near Tashkent. Konstantin Mineev, head of the consular department of the Russian Embassy in Uzbekistan, told RIA Novosti about this by telephone.
The head of the UN Office in Uzbekistan, Richard Conroy, was on board the Yak-40 aircraft. RIA Novosti was informed about this by the press service of the UN headquarters in New York.
Among those killed in the plane crash near Tashkent was a representative of an American humanitarian organization, US citizen Richard Penner. The Prosecutor General of Uzbekistan, Rashitjon Kadyrov, told reporters about this on Wednesday. Among the dead were also two Afghan citizens.
The Prosecutor General of Uzbekistan clarified that 37 people died as a result of the disaster:
32 men, four women and one child (5 dead - aircraft crew).
Today we can name several possible causes of the accident. In addition to the technical malfunction that Prosecutor General Kadyrov spoke about, bad weather could have led to the disaster: at the time of landing at Tashkent airport there was such thick fog that dispatchers advised pilots of all flights to land in Samarkand.
Note that the words of eyewitnesses refute both of these assumptions: they claim that the plane caught fire in the air, and not after hitting the fence. In this case, there was obviously some kind of explosion on board the Yak-40, which means there could have been a terrorist attack. None of these versions can be ruled out yet.
Resolution of the Cabinet of Ministers of the Republic of Uzbekistan
On January 13, 2004, at the Tashkent airport there was a plane crash of a Yak-40 aircraft of the NAC Uzbekistan Airways, operating flight No. NU-1154 on the Termez-Tashkent route. 37 people were killed, including 5 crew members.
In connection with the tragic events that led to the disaster and loss of life, the Cabinet of Ministers decides:
1. Create a government commission to investigate the causes of the plane crash.
Grant the Commission the right to involve in the investigation of the causes of the plane crash and the liquidation of its consequences specialists and experts from relevant ministries and departments who can assist in the qualified implementation of these works.
2. Government commission:
— organize work to excavate and examine the wreckage of the aircraft, extract and conduct a forensic medical examination of the bodies of the dead, as well as establish their identities;
— ensure the delivery of the bodies of the deceased to their relatives at their place of residence, provide assistance and take part in organizing and conducting funerals;
— conduct an in-depth investigation of the circumstances leading to the accident. The Prosecutor General's Office should initiate a criminal case in accordance with the law into the plane crash and ensure that the necessary operational and investigative measures are carried out;
— to provide, in the prescribed manner, material and other assistance to the families of citizens who died as a result of the plane crash;
— report on the results of the work done and proposals to eliminate such incidents in the future by January 25, 2004.
3. Declare January 15, 2004 throughout the country a day of mourning for the citizens killed in the plane crash.
Chairman of the Cabinet of Ministers
Islam KARIMOV.
Also read the decision of the commission investigating the plane crash.
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Information: NEWSru.com, Magnolia TV, Avia.ru, Uzreport.com
The photo shows a Yak-40 from another airline.
Yak-40 plane crash near Makhachkala - a crash that occurred on November 7, 1991 with a Yak-40 aircraft of Yugavia Airlines en route from Elista to Makhachkala. During landing, the plane crashed into a mountain. 51 people died.
Events
On November 7, 1991, a Yak-40 aircraft flew C-519 Elista - Makhachkala. The crew consisted of 4 people: commander, co-pilot, flight mechanic and flight attendant. At Elista airport, 34 passengers were boarded on a 32-seat plane, and then another 13 stowaways were added. As a result, at 12.43 p.m., a plane took off from Elista airport with an overload of 260 kilograms, although the alignment of the plane was within acceptable standards.
The flight was supposed to pass through the points Aktur, Almar, Ronka and Kizlyar, and then enter the descent area for landing. The crew contacted the dispatcher and requested permission to fly off-route and head straight to Kizlyar, bypassing Ronchi. Probably, not wanting to complicate his work, the dispatcher of the North Caucasus Center forbade the flight to Kizlyar, but allowed off-route flight. Later, the dispatcher informed the crew about their location and gave instructions to proceed to Kizlyar, which was done.
The airliner entered the sector, so the crew contacted the dispatcher of the Astrakhan center and reported to him about the flight at a flight level of 5700 meters and about the estimated time to pass Kizlyar. In response, the dispatcher, violating the flight instructions of the Makhachkala airport, gave the command to follow off the route directly to the Makhachkala drive. The crew knew that in this case they would have to fly over the Kanaburu mountain range, but nevertheless carried out the command, turning after flying over Kizlyar to the Makhachkala drive.
The Yak-40 descended to a flight level of 5100 meters and, 100 kilometers from the Makhachkala airport and 35 kilometers to the right of the air corridor, communicated with the approach controller and lied to him about entering the airport area along the air corridor. The approach controller, although he saw on the long-range radar screen that the plane was actually at an unspecified point, did not take it to the established route and did not even indicate to the pilots their location. Instead, in violation of the instructions, he gave the command to descend to an altitude of 1800 meters, although the plane in this case was descending into a dangerous sector for flights towards a mountain range that had heights of 890 and 720 meters. Then, when the airliner was at an altitude of 1800 meters, 45 kilometers from the Makhachkala airfield and 23 kilometers to the right of the route, the approach controller gave instructions to communicate with the landing controller. The crew confirmed the instructions, without specifying their location or entering the designated route.
41 kilometers from the airport, the crew contacted the landing controller, who gave the crew the wrong location. The dispatcher also gave permission to descend to an altitude of 1050 meters and head towards the drive, although the instructions established a minimum altitude of 1800 meters. But the crew blindly began to follow the instructions and soon found themselves in a zone of “darkening” by mountain peaks, as a result of which the illumination of the flight on the radar screen periodically disappeared. Not seeing the light on the screen, the dispatcher named the estimated location of the plane. Two incorrect messages in a row about the location of the aircraft misinformed the crew and created in them the erroneous opinion about the direction of the aircraft, that it was approaching the established flight route. As a result, the crew continued to maintain the same course, blindly trusting the data transmitted by the dispatcher and not using the instruments available on board that could have indicated that the plane was flying to a mountainous area with higher peaks.
At 13:41, the aircraft reported that it had reached an altitude of 1050 meters, to which the dispatcher gave instructions to continue the flight. The crew was away from the landing course and could not fly to the marker, but at 13:42 the crew reported that the marker had passed, to which the dispatcher, without checking the location of the aircraft, gave instructions to descend to an altitude of 400 meters according to the approach pattern. The plane was not equipped with a ground proximity warning system. The sky at that time was covered with continuous clouds, the height of which the crew did not know and believed that it was the same as above the airport - 980 meters, so they intended to “break through” it, switch to visual flight and then construct an approach maneuver .
Without reducing the vertical rate of descent, the crew began to turn left to enter the landing course, when just 5 seconds later at 13:42:56, a plane flying in the clouds at an altitude of 550 meters with a left bank of 20° crashed into the spur of Mount Kukurt-Bash (height 894 meters) 23 kilometers west of Makhachkala airport, completely collapsed and caught fire. All 4 crew members and 47 passengers on board were killed. At the time of the events, this was the largest disaster involving the Yak-40.
Air crash investigation
Based on the results of the investigation, the commission presented the following conclusion:
The disaster was the result of gross violations by ATC personnel and the crew of flight rules and ATC in mountainous areas, which led to the aircraft descending below a safe altitude outside the established pattern, colliding with a mountain and completely destroying the aircraft.
