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.
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.
During the Soviet years, it was somehow not customary to report incidents involving aircraft to the general public. He fell and fell, competent people will figure out what’s what, why bother people in vain. So the popular version has become that in the Soviet years absolute order reigned in aviation, everything flew and did not fall, but in modern times everything has become terrible.
Meanwhile, a search on any database of flight accidents reveals a huge number of disasters that happened on the territory of the USSR. In the late 70s, 80s, early 90s - 3-5 major disasters per year. In earlier years - even more.
This is the second edition of "Soviet Air Disasters", the first was published in July, after the disaster in Irkutsk. Continuing to study this topic, I collected so much information that the idea naturally came to mind to publish a new edition, somewhat expanding the time frame. In this edition, I tried to describe all the major plane crashes that occurred in the USSR in the period from 1977 to 1991. I didn’t go into the earlier years; there were too many cases there that I would have to write about. There is quite a lot of information about some incidents, including transcripts of crew conversations. There is almost nothing about some. Therefore, the descriptions are somewhat different.
1977 begins tragically. On January 13, a Tu-104 crashed while landing at Almaty airport, with 96 people on board. According to the official version, the cause of the crash was a fire in one of the engines. The plane crashed three kilometers from the runway and, as it fell, dug into the ground so much that the wreckage and remains of people had to be literally dug up:
A month later, on February 15, an Il-18 flying from Tashkent crashed while landing in Mineralnye Vody. 77 people died.
On May 27, 1977, an Aeroflot Il-62, flying along the Moscow-Havana route, while landing at a Cuban airport, touched a power line support with its wing and crashed to the ground. Nine crew members, 59 of the 61 passengers and one person on the ground were killed.
On May 19, 1978, a Tu154 flying from Baku to Leningrad makes an emergency landing on a potato field near the village of Maksatikha, Tver (then Kalinin) region. Unfortunately, at the end of the flight, the plane's wing hits a telegraph pole and catches fire. Of the 134 people on board, 130 managed to escape, four died. Cause of the accident: the flight engineer mistakenly blocked the access of fuel to the supply tank, from which fuel flowed to the engines. When the tank was empty, the engines stopped at an altitude of 10,000 meters. The Azerbaijani crew did the almost incredible: they managed not to lose control of the car, glide down and even land, but in the end they were unlucky: At first, the crew were almost going to be nominated for state awards, however, after an investigation they had to be brought to trial, as a result which resulted in a three-year prison sentence for criminal negligence for a flight engineer and the dismissal of the PIC from flight service.
On October 7, 1978, the Yak-40 crashed during takeoff from Sverdlovsk Koltsovo airport due to the failure of all engines. 38 people died
On the evening of March 17, 1979, a Tu-104, board 42444, was preparing to fly from Moscow to Odessa. This plane was already 20 years old and was supposed to perform one of the last flights before being laid up. The flight to Odessa was repeatedly postponed, as a result of which passengers were constantly changing (some, tired of waiting, handed over their tickets, others, on the contrary, took their seats - another reason to think about what fate is). The crew commander, although he had sufficient flying practice, only flew 32 hours as a Tu-104 commander. Therefore, when, a few minutes after takeoff, the “Left Engine Fire” sign lit up in the cockpit, the crew was frankly confused. Without even trying to visually verify that the engine was really burning, the PIC decided to turn around and return to Moscow, forgetting not only that the plane had an overload of 10.7 tons, but also forgetting to drain the fuel from the tanks. As a result, the plane went below the glide path, touched a power line support with its wing and hit the ground. The force of the impact was such that the multi-ton car was thrown into the air and at a height of no more than five meters it flew over the Moscow-Kiev highway, clogged with cars (!), and the passengers' seat belts were torn off. After which there was a new blow to the ground, the cabin of the plane came off and it rushed for almost two kilometers across a frozen field, raking trees, stones and earth into the cabin. In general, the most natural meat grinder took place. Of the hundred passengers, fifteen miraculously survived, sitting in the rear of the plane. Five of the six crew members survived. The investigation showed that there was no engine fire on the Tu-104; false fire alarms on this aircraft were not uncommon at all. The crew commander was found guilty of the accident, who was sentenced to 8 years in prison, but after a year and a half he was released under an amnesty, and was subsequently even partially rehabilitated.
Another disaster in 1979 is better known and it became such only because the Pakhtakor football team died in it. On August 11, 1979, a Tu-134 flying from Tashkent-Minsk and a Tu-134 flying from Chelyabinsk to Chisinau collided in the air over Dneprodzerzhinsk. The cause of the collision was a gross error by the dispatcher, who incorrectly calculated the estimated time of intersection of the courses of two aircraft, occupying the same echelon and moving across each other, and a collision occurred in the air. The error could still be corrected; the controller noticed in time that the planes were approaching at the same altitude and with a minimum interval and demanded that the commander of one of the “carcasses” change the altitude, but mistakenly took the response of another aircraft, which was in the control zone, as confirmation of his order and stopped flying planes. The result was 178 dead, no one had a chance to survive. Dispatcher Sumskoy still believes that a fatal combination of circumstances and bad luck led to the collision.
After just 18 days, a Tu-124 crashed near Kirsanov, traveling along the Kyiv-Kazan route. At an altitude of 9000 meters the plane went into a tailspin, and at an altitude of 3000 meters it began to collapse. The wreckage of the plane was scattered over a considerable distance. 5 crew members and 58 passengers were killed. According to experts, the plane went into a tailspin due to the accidental release of the flaps:
And five days later, on September 3, an An-24 crashed while landing at Amderma airport, with 40 people on board. The cause of the disaster was a premature descent and collision with the ground at a distance of 2 km from the runway.
In 1980, by a strange coincidence, all major plane crashes occur in Central Asia. On June 12, 44 kilometers from Dushanbe, a Yak-40 flying from Leninabad crashed into a mountain. 4 crew members and all 25 passengers on board were killed. The cause of the disaster was a serious error in navigation, as a result of which the plane deviated from course by 43 kilometers and, at the command of the dispatcher, began to descend into the mountains. At an altitude of 2800 meters, the crew realized that they had made a mistake and tried to return to the correct course, but got into a cloud and crashed into the mountains.
A month later, on the night of July 7-8, 1980, a Tu-154 crashed on the outskirts of Almaty, carrying 166 people. The cause of the accident was the so-called “wind shear”: on takeoff, the plane was hit by a vertical air flow, lost altitude and crashed on the outskirts of the city, falling apart and continuing to move. The force of the impact of the fuselage on the ground was such that passengers were simply thrown out of the broken cabin and their bodies were found for three days at a considerable distance from the crash site on trees and roofs of houses:
June 13, 1981. Il-14 crash on the eastern shore of Lake Baikal. 52 people died (despite the fact that the maximum number of passengers on the Il-14 was 36 people). The plane was flying along the route Ulan-Ude-Severomuisk-Ulan-Ude. Suddenly there was a sharp deterioration in weather conditions and the crew requested landing at the Ust-Barguzin airfield. At an altitude of 1300 meters, in poor visibility conditions, the plane crashed into the western slope of the mountain of the Svyatoy Nos Peninsula at a speed of more than 400 km/h. The force of the impact was such that the plane and the people on board almost turned to dust:
A month and a half later, on August 24, 1981, another disaster occurred in the Far East. By the way, they often talk about her, mainly because the only surviving passenger survived after falling to the ground from a height of more than five thousand meters! A passenger An-24, traveling along the route Khabarovsk - Komsomolsk-on-Amur - Blagoveshchensk, collided in the air with a Tu-16 military bomber. 20-year-old Larisa Savitskaya was lucky at the moment of impact to be on the exact seat that, along with a fragment of the fuselage, began to fall down. Already near the ground, the blow was softened by the tops of the birches, and the blow itself fell not on solid ground, but in a small swamp. Despite this, Larisa received serious injuries and numerous fractures. Rescuers found her only three days later. Now Larisa Savitskaya lives in Moscow. But 36 passengers and crew members of the An-24 and six military pilots were less fortunate. The cause of the accident was recognized as a monstrous lack of coordination between civil and military air traffic control services, due to which passenger and military aircraft occupied the same flight level for several years:
Only 24 days passed and again there was a disaster in the east of the USSR and again with similar reasons: the Yak-40 aircraft (board 87455), flying from Irkutsk to Zheleznogorsk, crashed into a military Mi-8 helicopter when landing in the clouds at an altitude of 400 meters. 33 people died on board the Yak-40, 7 on board the helicopter. The cause of the accident is the same as in the case of the Amur An-24: inconsistency in the actions of civilian and military air traffic controllers - both sides were landing, but why did the Mi-8 do this in the corridor along which civil aircraft landed at the airport remained unknown:
November 16, 1981. One of the few plane crashes caused by equipment failure. A fatal coincidence of circumstances leads to the death of the Tu-154 (board 85480) at Norilsk airport. The plane was flying from Krasnoyarsk to Norilsk, with 167 passengers and crew members on board. Landing at Norilsk airport was carried out manually, but with the autothrottle switched on. A few seconds before touching the runway, the automatic traction system failed, reducing the engine speed to a minimum. The plane went down sharply. To try to go around, PIC Shilak set the engines to takeoff mode and tried to pull the control wheel towards himself. But here the cruel joke was played by the fact that the nose of the plane turned out to be noticeably heavier. Shilak only needed a few meters to get the car out of the fall. The “carcass” hit the earthen embankment at the edge of the runway and fell apart into several parts. 99 passengers were killed and the rest were injured. Of the crew, only the flight engineer and two flight attendants survived. In this case, the crew did everything they could, but the technology and design features of the Tu-154 turned out to be stronger:
The two biggest disasters of 1982 occur just eight days apart. On June 28, a Yak-42 crashed near Mozyr, following the Leningrad-Kyiv route. There were 8 crew members and 124 passengers on board the plane, all of whom died. The cause of the disaster was the destruction and separation of the horizontal stabilizer attachment point. After this disaster, Yak-42 flights were stopped for almost a year and a half.
On July 6, 1982, an IL-62 flying to Freetown crashes near Moscow. Immediately after takeoff, when the plane had not yet gained altitude, a fire alarm went off, first in the first and then in the second engines of the aircraft. And again, as in the case of the Tu-104 of 1979, the commander is not convinced that a fire is really taking place; he follows strictly according to the instructions and turns off the engines, while simultaneously trying to turn the car around and return to Sheremetyevo. However, there is no longer enough traction for this and the last thing the crew manages to do is turn away from the village of Mendeleevo. The plane crashed into the forest, killing 80 passengers and 10 crew members. The commission that investigated the causes of the accident found that all engines were operational, and the alarm was triggered by hot air from the engine hitting the fire sensors:
On September 29 of the same year, another Id-62 crashed in Luxembourg, performing an international flight Msokwa-Luxembourg-Havana-Lima. For unknown reasons, the plane deviated from the runway during landing, touched a ground structure and fell to the ground. 13 of the 77 people on board were killed.
April 19, 1983. In poor visibility conditions, a Yak-40 crashes near Leninakan. 17 passengers and 4 crew members were killed. The cause of the accident was a navigation error by the crew, who deviated from the course and lost orientation, and the complete inaction of the dispatchers, who did not pay attention to the deviation of the aircraft from the course and did not require the crew to change the direction of movement.
A similar disaster occurred on August 30, 1983 near Almaty. The crew of the Tu-134, following the route Kazan - Chelyabinsk - Alma-Ata, violated the approach pattern during landing, deviating from it by almost 15 kilometers. The pilots saw the approaching mountain, but did not have time to avoid the collision. 90 people died.
The third major plane crash of 1983 occurred on December 24: an An-24 crashed while landing at Leshukonskoye airport. Five crew members and 44 of the 49 passengers on board were killed. The cause of the accident was gross errors in piloting: When landing at night in conditions of clouds and drizzling rain, the crew did not go around despite an unacceptable deviation to the left of the glide path. The pilot began to turn further to the right and, through uncoordinated actions, brought the plane to a supercritical slip angle, which led to a loss of speed. 1 km from the runway, after passing the decision altitude, the crew still tried to go around, but the plane began to roll to the left and lose altitude. With a roll reaching 90 degrees, the An-24 crashed to the ground 230 m from the runway and 110 m to the right of it.
October 11, 1984. TU154B crashed on the runway in Omsk into airfield maintenance vehicles drying the runway. 178 people died. The accident was caused by the monstrous carelessness of the ground services. The launch controller fell asleep (!!!) at his workplace and did not give the order to clear the runway where the TU-154 was landing from equipment. The flashing lights on the airfield vehicles were turned off; the personnel did not pay attention to the runway landing lights that had come on - the dispatcher did not give the order to leave the runway. As a result, when the ship’s commander saw the heavy KRAZ trucks on the runway, it was too late to change anything. The impact, the cabin being torn off, instantly ignite 16 tons of fuel in the tanks of the airfield vehicles and the plane turns into a giant torch. Eyewitnesses say that, having climbed out of the torn off cabin, the commander walked in the direction of the control room, waving a pistol (in those years, crew commanders had service weapons in case of emergencies) and threatened to kill everyone there. According to the court verdict, the entire airport shift in charge of the flights was sentenced to various terms of imprisonment - from 12 to 15 years.
On December 23 of the same year, another TU-154 crashed near Krasnoyarsk immediately after takeoff. 110 people died. Cause of the accident: destruction of engine No. 3 during takeoff, damage by flying debris from engine No. 2, fire. The crew of the plane tried to reach the airport on one engine, but as the fire developed, all the hydraulic systems of the plane were damaged, and when there were only two minutes of flight left to the runway, they completely failed. The plane lost control and crashed into the ground.
February 1, 1985. A Tu-134 of the Belarusian air squad, en route from Minsk to Leningrad, crashes near Minsk. Cause of the accident: freezing of fuel in the tanks (!) and stopping of the engines. The plane crashed into the forest and burned out. 58 of the 83 people on board were killed.
May 3, 1985. Near Lvov, a TU134 flying from Tallinn and an An-26 military transport aircraft collided, on board which were almost the entire leadership of the Air Force of the Carpathian Military District. The cause of the disaster was a gross mistake by the Lvov air traffic controller, who mistakenly determined the location of the An-26 by a mark on the radar screen and gave the Tu134 crew a command to descend. 71 people died on board the Tushka, and 23 on board the Ana.
July 10, 1985. The largest plane crash in the history of Soviet aviation. TU154 No. 85311, flying from Tashkent to Leningrad, crashes near Uchkuduk. Cause of the accident: the car stalled into a flat tailspin due to the fact that the plane was flying at an altitude of more than 11,000 meters at an unacceptably low speed: According to the official version, this happened due to the fact that the plane entered an abnormally high temperature zone, engine thrust dropped, shaking, and the flight engineer, mistaking it for a surge, reduced the gas to a minimum. The plane lost speed and went into a flat spin. According to another version, the crew fell asleep (!) in the cockpit: the plane’s takeoff after an intermediate landing in Karshi was postponed, it was very hot and the crew was exhausted: After takeoff, the autopilot was turned on, which maintained the flight altitude until the last moment, even when the thrust dropped and the plane stopped lose speed. The fall of the Carcass in a flat spin lasted 153 seconds, killing 200 people on board the plane (191 passengers and 9 crew members). By the way, the number of passengers seems strange to many, because the Tu-154 in this modification could take only 180 people on board. This is another one of the mysteries of that disaster, which is now so often remembered in connection with the fall of the Pulkovo Tu near Donetsk.
July 2, 1986. On a Tu-134 taking off from Syktyvkar, a fire broke out in the luggage compartment. Since the cabin was quickly filling with smoke, the commander decided to make an emergency landing. During landing, the car hit trees and collapsed. 2 crew members and 54 of 94 passengers were killed. The cause of the fire, according to the commission conducting the investigation, was a gross violation of safety rules by one of the passengers who was carrying some flammable liquid in their luggage.
October 20, 1986, Kuibyshev Kurumoch airport. The most stupid accident in the history of Soviet aviation, but this did not make it any less tragic. Tu-134, flying from Grozny to Sverdlovsk, made an intermediate landing. There were 85 passengers and 8 crew members on board the plane. During the landing approach, the crew commander bet (!!!) with the co-pilot that he could land the plane “blindly” using instruments and closed all the sun shades in the cockpit. As a result, the plane touched down at an unacceptable speed, with a monstrous vertical overload and a roll to the right wing. The landing gear broke immediately from the impact, the plane was dragged along the runway for about three hundred meters, after which it left the runway, followed by flipping over and breaking up. The plane's tanks instantly burst into flames and the cabin turned into a fire trap for passengers, most of whom were unable to unfasten their seat belts. 58 people were burned alive or poisoned by combustion products, another 11 died in hospitals. Those who were at the breaking point and at the tail of the plane were the luckiest: they managed to get out, although they were all injured. The crew commander, whose actions led to the accident, survived and was sentenced to 15 years in prison, but then for some reason the sentence was revised and the sentence was reduced to only six years. They say he is still alive
On December 12, 1986, a Tu134A of the Belarusian air squad crashed at Berlin Schönefeld Airport. All 9 crew members and 63 of 73 passengers were killed, most of whom were German schoolchildren returning from a trip to the USSR. The cause of the accident: again, a monstrous coincidence of circumstances. The German dispatcher, giving the command to the TU crew to land, did not speak according to the instructions, the aircraft crew misunderstood him, and as a result, the plane, instead of the working left runway, landed on the right runway, where repair work was being carried out at that moment.
January 18, 1988. The Tu-154 broke in half during a too hard landing at Krasnovodsk airport. Of the 137 passengers on board, 11 who were at the fault site died. According to the official version, the cause of the disaster was the piloting of the aircraft during landing by the co-pilot, who made a mistake.
Literally immediately, on January 24, 1988, a Yak-40 flying to Tyumen crashed near Nizhnevartovsk immediately after takeoff. For unknown reasons (according to the main version - due to erroneous actions of the crew), all three engines turned off and although one of them was able to start, the plane lost altitude, hit a power line support and crashed into the ground. Of the 35 people on board, 31 died, most of them simply frozen to death in the deep snow, as the plane crashed late in the evening and was discovered only after dawn.
February 27, 1988. Tu-134 lands at Surgut airport. The crew commander asks the controller for permission to land using the shortest route. Already on the glide path, the plane enters a zone of sharp deterioration in visibility. Contrary to all instructions requiring to immediately stop the descent and go around, and common sense, the commander continues the landing. As a result: the Tu-134 crashed into the ground away from the runway and caught fire. 17 passengers and three crew members were killed, and 37 people were injured.
A similar disaster occurred on November 21, 1989 in Tyumen, where, during landing in difficult weather conditions, an An-24 flying from Perm crashed into trees to the side of the runway. The crew and 28 of 36 passengers were killed.
On January 13, 1990, a Tu-134 (board 65951) crashed near Pervouralsk, flying Tyumen - Ufa - Volgograd. In the Sverdlovsk region, a fire broke out in the cargo compartment of the plane due to a short circuit. The crew requested an emergency landing in Sverdlovsk and began to descend. However, during the descent, part of the electrical equipment failed, and then the engine fire alarm went off (as it later turned out, the alarm was false). The pilots decided to land the plane on a snow-covered agricultural field, but here, as in the case of the Azerbaijani Tu-154 in May 1978, they were unlucky. Already rushing across the field, the Tu-134 caught a watering hydrant with its wing, the wing came off, the car spun out and it hit a tree. 27 of the 71 people on board were killed, 44 were injured.
On March 23, 1991, while landing at Navoi airport (Uzbekistan), the An-24 crashed into a stack of reinforced concrete slabs, collapsed and caught fire. Almost nothing is still known about the causes of this disaster. The entire crew and 30 of the 59 passengers were killed.
On May 23, 1991, in Leningrad, a TU154 flying from Sukhumi crashed while landing at Pulkovo-1. I remember this disaster well; they have already talked about it openly. Cause of the accident: crew error; the pilot landed the car so hard that the tail section of the Tushka broke off from the impact. Of the 178 people on board, 13 died. The entire Pulkovo runway was then littered with flowers and fruit from the luggage compartment:
On November 7, 1991, a plane crash typical of the Caucasus occurred: a Yak-40 crashed into a mountain in poor visibility near Makhachkala. 34 people died.
And finally, the last serious plane crash in the history of the USSR was the crash of the An-24 on November 26, 1991 near Bugulma. During landing, the plane deviated two kilometers to the right of the course. The crew decided to go around, but the plane continued to fall to the right and crashed 800 meters from the runway. According to the main version, the cause of the accident was icing of the stabilizer. 4 crew members and 37 passengers were killed.
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 to approach 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.
