Experts of the Russian Ministry of Defense completed a complete decoding of the black boxes and were able to name the final reason, which was on December 25, 2016 over the Black Sea. According to experts, in which it happened due to a combination of factors - the plane was overloaded and while flying the aircraft, the co-pilot made a mistake, writes L! FE.
Air forceAccording to the source, the notorious human factor is considered a priority by the investigators. According to experts, the problem with the flaps, due to which the plane began to lose altitude, was directly related to the error of the co-pilot. passenger aircraft, 33-year-old Alexander Rovensky.
“In the third minute of the flight, when the Tu-154 was at an altitude of 450 m above sea level, the sensors of the stability control system worked. As a result, the car began to lose altitude sharply due to problems with the flaps. I tried to turn the car around in order to reach the ground, but I didn’t have time to do this, ”says a source familiar with the investigation into the causes of the plane crash in Sochi.
Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation Experts are sure that the reason for the malfunction of the aircraft mechanism was a banal one - when the aircraft took off, instead of the landing gear, he pulled the wrong lever and removed the flaps. This is the main version of the reasons for the tragedy in which the members of the Alexandrov ensemble, the legendary and 9 journalists of Russian TV channels, who flew to Syrian Latakia to give a charity concert to the military from the Russian Federation, who were forced to New Year serve in Syria.
The Ministry of Defense also adds that the situation was aggravated by another factor - the overload of the aircraft. Everything in the Tu-154's luggage compartment was filled to capacity. Therefore, the tail section of the liner was pulled down.
Air force To save the car, according to experts, it was impossible - there was not enough speed and height. The tail section first touched the water, and then the Tu-154 hit the sea with its right wing at high speed and collapsed, which led to the death of everyone on board. The source emphasizes that emergency situation became a complete surprise for the crew: in the first seconds, the commander of the plane, 35-year-old Major Roman Volkov and the co-pilot Alexander Rovensky, were confused, but quickly pulled themselves together and before last seconds tried to save the plane.
At the same time, experts from the Russian Defense Ministry consider the announced reason for the Tu-154 crash "" premature. Experts emphasize that there is still a colossal amount of work to collect and lay out the wreckage of the liner in order to talk about the exact causes of the tragedy.
Recall that the plane crash in Sochi occurred on December 25, 2016. The Tu-154 aircraft of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation at 5:40 am Moscow time, 1.7 km from the coast of Sochi, crashed over the Black Sea. The aircraft, on which there were 92 people, flew to the Syrian Khmeimim from the Chkalovsky airfield, and in Sochi it was just refueling. A few minutes after taking off from the runway, the plane disappeared from the radar screens.
After the complete decryption of the black boxes of the Tu-154 that crashed at the end of December 2016 in the water area of Sochi - parametric and speech- The experts of the Ministry of Defense can in fact already accurately name the reasons for the plane crash.According to experts, the plane with passengers was destroyed by a combination of several factors:went on the last voyage overloaded, and the co-pilot Alexander Rovensky taking off, perhapsconfused the landing gear and flap control levers. When the crew noticed the error, it was already too late: the heavy Tu-154 simply did not have enough height for a rescue maneuver, so ithit the water with the tail of the fuselage and collapsed.
Heavy and uncontrollable
A Life source familiar with the investigation into the causes of the disaster said that the notorious human factor was recognized as the priority version of the Tu-154 crash.
The data of the speech and parametric (recording the operation of all aircraft units) recorders studied by the experts of the Research Center for the Operation and Repair of Aircraft of the Ministry of Defense in Lyubertsy say that in the third minute of the flight, when the airliner was at an altitude of 450 meters above sea level, the sensors of the directional stability system worked. - a source told Life. - The car began to lose altitude sharply due to problems with the flaps.
According to experts, this could have happened after the second pilot, 33-year-old captain Alexander Rovensky, instead of removing the landing gear, retracted the flaps.
From this, the plane went into an outrageous angle of attack, the crew tried to turn the car to reach the ground, but did not have time to do this, - added a source to Life.
As it turned out, the situation was aggravated by the overload of the Tu-154. Everything in the luggage compartment was filled to capacity. The tail of the plane was pulled down. It was impossible to save the car: there was not enough speed and height.The tail section first touched the water, and then the Tu-154at high speedhit the sea with its right wing and collapsed.
According to a Life source, the emergency situation came as a complete surprise to the crew: in the first seconds, the aircraft commander, 35-year-old Major Roman Volkov and the co-pilot Alexander Rovensky, were confused, but quickly pulled themselves together and tried to save the plane until the last seconds.
DECODING:
Speed 300 ... (Inaudible.)
- (Inaudible.)
Took the racks, commander.
- (Inaudible.)
Wow, e-mine!
(A sharp beep sounds.)
Flaps, bitch, what the fuck nya!
Altimeter!
US... (Inaudible.)
(The signal sounds about a dangerous approach to the ground.)
- (Inaudible.)
Commander, we are falling!
So the experts realized that the plane had problems with the flaps precisely due to the fault of the crew.
The pilots who flew the Tu-154, with whom Life spoke, confirm the conclusions of the experts of the Ministry of Defense that the cause of the crash could be a pilot error.
In Tupolev, the landing gear and flap retraction knobs are made on the visor of the cockpit, between them, above the windshield. You can confuse them, especially if the co-pilot, sitting on the right, whose duties include controlling the flaps and landing gear during takeoff, is tired, '' Honored Pilot of the Russian Federation Viktor Sazhenin, who himself flew on the Tu-154 for eight years, told Life. - From this, the plane went into an outrageous angle of attack, hit the water, and its tail fell off.
This version is considered acceptable by the test pilot Hero of Russia Magomed Tolboyev.
On the Tu-154 control panel, the flap and landing gear switches are located above the windshield. Flaps on the left, landing gear on the right. The co-pilot, who sits in the seat on the right, is responsible for them. It is possible that the pilot could confuse the levers or be distracted by something, so the plane took off with the landing gear extended and the flaps retracted, '' Tolboyev told Life.
According to Tolboev, it cannot be ruled out that after takeoff the crew exceeded the speed and the flap mechanism collapsed, because of which the liner fell to the right, lost speed and crashed into the water.
Tragic experience
Another factor in the Tu-154 disaster in Sochi could be the lack of sufficient knowledge of the ship's commander and co-pilot on how to act in an extreme situation.
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Accident with Tu-154 B-2 s tail number RA-85572 of the Ministry of Defense occurred on December 25, 2016. It was at 5:40 am Moscow time, 1.7 kilometers from the coast of Sochi. The board of the Ministry of Defense flew to the Syrian Khmeimim from the Chkalovsky airfield, and in Sochi it was just refueling. There were 92 people on board. A few minutes after taking off from the runway, the plane disappeared from the radar screens.
The crashed airliner was based at the Chkalovsky airfield near Moscow and was part of the State Airline 223rd Flight Detachment of the Ministry of Defense, which transports military personnel.
The Tu-154 B-2 modification is designed to carry 180 economy class passengers and was produced from 1978 to 1986. A total of 382 aircraft were built. Since 2012, Russian civilian airlines have not operated the Tu-154 B-2.
Dr. Lisa
The list of passengers published by the Ministry of Defense includes the director of the international organization "Fair Aid" Elizaveta Glinka (also known as Doctor Lisa). According to an Interfax source, Glinka flew on board this plane from Moscow to Sochi, but did not go to Syria.
In the message of the fund, it is noted that Glinka really took off on this flight: she was accompanying a humanitarian cargo for the Tishrin hospital in Latakia. "IPO" Fair Help "does not have any information in connection with the catastrophe," - says in.
Doctor Lisa's husband, lawyer Gleb Glinka, told Snob that his wife was on board at the time of the crash. There is no other confirmation of this information.
The website of the Presidential Human Rights Council, of which Glinka was a member, published a statement by its head Mikhail Fedotov, in which he confirmed that Doctor Lisa was supposed to take medicines to a hospital in Latakia.
“Dr. Lisa was everyone's favorite. And there was a reason: it was she who for many years almost daily provided palliative care, fed the homeless, clothed them, gave them shelter. It was she who, under bullets, took out sick and wounded children from Donbass so that they could get help in the best hospitals in Moscow and St. Petersburg. It was she who organized a shelter for amputee children, where they undergo rehabilitation after the hospital, ”the statement said.
What Dr. Lisa did
Elizaveta Glinka received all-Russian fame after she organized a collection of aid in favor of the victims during large forest fires in the European part of Russia. The Foundation provided humanitarian aid and equipment to fire victims and volunteer firefighters. In 2012, the Doctor Lisa Foundation organized a collection of humanitarian aid for flood victims in Krymsk (Krasnodar Territory). Together with TV presenter Ksenia Sobchak, Elizaveta Glinka organized a charity auction, at which more than 16 million rubles were collected for flood victims.
Humanitarian aid during military conflicts
After the outbreak of the armed conflict in eastern Ukraine, Glinka took part in helping people living in eastern Ukraine. She repeatedly traveled to Donbass during the hostilities and brought children in need of treatment from there to Moscow, and also donated medicines and humanitarian aid. In total, since March 2014, Dr. Liza has visited Donbass almost 20 times.
During the war in Syria, Glinka traveled to the country on humanitarian missions - she was engaged in the delivery and distribution of medicines, and the organization of medical assistance for the civilian population.
Disaster investigation
The press secretary of the Russian President Dmitry Peskov told reporters that Vladimir Putin was promptly informed about the incident. The President, according to Peskov, is in constant contact with Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, who held a video conference with the leadership of the Armed Forces on the organization of search and rescue operations. The Defense Ministry commission to investigate the plane crash flew to Adler early in the morning.
The President instructed Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev to form a state commission to investigate the Tu-154 crash. Minister of Transport Maxim Sokolov headed the commission. December 26 is declared a day of mourning.
A criminal case under article “Violation of flight rules or preparation for them” (Article 351 of the Criminal Code) was initiated by the Investigative Committee. As the official representative of the department Svetlana Petrenko told RBC, a group of employees of the central office of the Investigative Committee has been sent to Sochi, who have extensive experience in the investigation. aviation accidents... According to the head of the press service of the Chief Military Prosecutor's Office Natalia Zemskova, a joint group of employees of the supervisory agency and the Ministry of Defense also flew to Sochi.
Emergency services found an oil slick 6-8 km offshore in the Black Sea. The wreckage of the aircraft was found at a depth of 50-70 m, one and a half kilometers from the coast. Personal belongings of passengers are found 12-14 km from the coast, the first body was found 6 km from the coast.
The head of the monitoring service of the central joint All-Russian Society for Rescue on Waters, Vladimir Gritsikhin, believes that the wreckage of the Tu-154, under favorable conditions, can be lifted from the bottom in a week. “The depth of 50-70 m is not great, it is quite possible to gently lift large fragments with soft pontoons. The depth is such that it is unlikely that anyone can be saved, but it is possible to lift all the fragments of the aircraft. I think that everything can be extracted in a week if the services work on time. The Ministry of Emergency Situations has good specialists, if they call, we will connect, ”he told TASS.
This is the fifth plane crash involving the Tu-154 over the past ten years.
On January 1, 2011, the Tu-154 B-2 plane, flying from Surgut to Moscow, caught fire on the runway. The evacuation of 134 passengers and crew members was carried out, three people were killed, about 40 were injured. The plane burned down completely.
On April 10, 2010, the Tu-154 of the President of Poland, flying from Warsaw to Smolensk, fell while landing at the Severny military airfield in the Smolensk region. 89 passengers and eight crew members, including Polish President Lech Kaczynski, were killed.
On July 15, 2009, a Tu-154 crashed in Iran, making a flight from Tehran to Yerevan. On board the aircraft were 153 people plus 15 crew members, among the passengers were mainly citizens of Armenia, as well as Iran and Georgia. They all died.
On August 22, 2006, the Tu-154M, flying from Anapa to St. Petersburg, lost control and fell into a flat spin. The plane crashed near settlement Sukha Balka not far from Donetsk. 160 passengers were killed, including 49 children and ten crew members.
Versions of what happened
The official reasons for the plane crash have not yet been named. Rosgidromettsentr notes that weather in the area of the crash on the morning of December 25 were normal and easy to fly the aircraft. An Interfax source in the emergency services said that as one of the versions of the plane crash, a bird hit the Tu-154 engine (there is a station of migratory birds and an ornithopark near Sochi). In addition, according to the source, versions are being considered technical malfunction Tu-154 and possible refueling of the aircraft with low-quality fuel. According to a RIA Novosti source, a crew error could have been the cause of the crash.
“If a bird were hit, the crew would have the opportunity to report back to the ground. After takeoff, the crew gained sufficient altitude, birds do not fly at such a height, "- said in a conversation with RBC, flight safety specialist Alexander Romanov, pointing out that one of the most probable versions What happened, he considers a terrorist attack.
"Fontanka" in the Ministry of Defense notes that the FSB was involved in the investigation. Security officers are checking everyone who might have approached the ship at the Chkalovsky military airport and in Adler. Security officials are working out a version of a terrorist attack. This information is confirmed by the interlocutor of RBC in the FSB. According to him, we are talking about a standard check, which is carried out in such cases. In the public relations center, the FSB could neither officially confirm nor deny information about a possible terrorist attack.
“If there was an instant loss of communication with the crew, then it was most likely an aircraft explosion or a collision in the air with some object,” Yuri Sytnikov, a member of the presidential commission on the development of general aviation, told RBC.
“The plane sat down for refueling, in this case a lot technical services approached the plane, so people had the opportunity to put an explosive device in the compartments, ”Romanov is sure.
As the honored test pilot Hero of Russia Yuri Vashchuk believes, equipment failure is unlikely. He believes that an incident on board the plane could have led to the disaster.
Correspondent of "Kommersant" in Krasnodar Territory reports that at the time of the crash, none of local residents did not hear the explosion and did not see the flash.
The source of "Interfax" in the power structures excludes the version of the terrorist attack. “Apparently, when the aircraft collided with the water surface, a water hammer occurred, which entailed a large scattering of debris,” the agency's interlocutor said.
“It happened after takeoff, when the landing gear and flaps are being retracted. There are tons of technical things that can happen here. As a result, the plane may just roll over because of its low speed, ”Honored Test Pilot of the USSR Viktor Zabolotsky said in a conversation with RBC.
“For three engines to fail at once, something supernatural has to happen. The failure of even one engine is a critical situation, but I do not think that it could lead to a disaster. Something happened on board, to which the pilots did not have time to react. So, for example, it was with the crash of a passenger plane over Egypt. There was a lightning depressurization of the plane, and it lost control, "- said Vashchuk RBK.
President of the Association of Veterans of the Anti-Terror Unit "Alpha" Sergei Goncharov told RBC that the version of the terrorist attack may exist, but not as a priority. “This is an aircraft of the Ministry of Defense, it is serviced at a high level by trusted people. All the people we knew were in the liner, there were no strangers. The plane did not fly over the sea for so long, and if there was an explosion, someone from the eyewitnesses would have heard it, ”Goncharov noted.
There were no complaints about the plane
The crashed Tu-154 was released more than 30 years ago, but “there were no complaints about its technical condition,” an emergency service source told Interfax. Before departure the aircraft was in good working order; in general, the Tu-154 was operated “in a sparing mode”.
The Ministry of Defense said that the last repair of the liner took place in December 2014, RIA Novosti reports. The crashed aircraft was controlled by the first class pilot Roman Volkov, who had flown more than 3000 hours.
The Tu-154 that crashed near Sochi has undergone three major overhauls during its operation, the press service of the Russian Machines corporation told TASS. “The Tu-154 aircraft number 85572 was produced on March 29, 1983 at the Kuibyshev aircraft plant (now the Aviakor aircraft plant). The last, the third overhaul of the aircraft took place at Aviakor in December 2014. Since the implementation of this overhaul, the operator has not received any applications from the operator for scheduled periodic maintenance of the aircraft and extension of resources. Accordingly, Aviakor did not service this aircraft, "the company said in a statement.
After the plane crash, Minister of Industry and Trade Denis Manturov said that the decision to decommission Tu-154 aircraft "would be premature." “The service life of this aircraft today is 40 years, and if we take foreign analogues, then some aircraft have a service life of up to 60 years, so in aviation there are completely different principles of resource assignment, the issue of operating time to a cycle,” Manturov noted.
Since the beginning of the 2000s, the Tu-154 has been decommissioned almost everywhere.
S7 Airlines was the first to announce the withdrawal of Soviet-made aircraft Tu-154 and Il-86 from its fleets. In November 2009, the “Rossiya” airline based in St. Petersburg stopped flying the Tu-154. The carrier replaced these aircraft with Boeing 737s, but later opted for the A320 family. Aeroflot announced its plans in 2008 and completed the process in early 2010. The main reasons for the withdrawal of the Tu-154 from the fleets are the low fuel efficiency of the aircraft, as well as the high accident rate.
In January 2014, only 80 Tu-154 aircraft remained in operation in the world. As of July 2016, the only commercial operator of Tu-154 aircraft in Russia was ALROSA with two aircraft.
The last aircraft of the family with serial number 998 was produced on February 19, 2013 and handed over to the Russian Ministry of Defense.
Over the Black Sea, became the 73rd liner of this family, lost as a result of aviation accidents. The total number of deaths in such accidents for 44 years has reached 3 thousand 263 people. The Yuga.ru portal looked into the history of the aircraft's operation and recalled the largest accidents with its participation.
Tu-154 is a passenger aircraft developed in the 1960s in the USSR at the Tupolev design bureau. It was intended for the needs of medium-haul airlines and for a long time was the most massive Soviet jet passenger aircraft.
The first flight was carried out on October 3, 1968. Tu-154 was mass-produced from 1970 to 1998. From 1998 to 2013 at the Samara plant "Aviakor" mass production modifications of the Tu-154M. A total of 1,026 vehicles were manufactured. Until the end of the 2000s, it was one of the most common aircraft on medium-range routes in Russia.
The aircraft with tail number RA-85572, which crashed on December 25, 2016 over the Black Sea, was manufactured in 1983 and belonged to the Tu-154B-2 modification. This modification was produced from 1978 to 1986: an economy class cabin designed for 180 passengers, an improved automatic on-board control system. In 1983, the RA-85572 board was transferred to the USSR Air Force.
According to some Tu-154 pilots, the plane is too complicated for a mass passenger liner and requires high qualifications of both flight and ground personnel.
At the end of the 20th century, the aircraft, designed in the 1960s, became obsolete, and airlines began replacing it with modern analogues - the Boeing 737 and Airbus A320.
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In 2002, the EU countries, due to a discrepancy in the level of permissible noise, banned the flights of the Tu-154, which were not equipped with special noise-absorbing panels. And since 2006, all flights of the Tu-154 (except for the modification of the Tu-154M) in the EU have been finally banned. Aircraft of this type at that time were operated mainly in the CIS countries.
In the mid-2000s, the aircraft was gradually decommissioned. The main reason is the low fuel efficiency of the engines. Since the aircraft was designed in the 1960s, the issue of engine efficiency was not before the developers. The economic crisis of 2008 also contributed to the acceleration of the process of decommissioning the aircraft. In 2008, the entire Tu-154 fleet was withdrawn by S7, the next year it was done by Rossiya and Aeroflot. In 2011, the operation of the Tu-154 was stopped " Ural Airlines". In 2013, the airliners of this type were removed from the air fleet by UTair, the largest Tu-154 operator at that time.
In October 2016, the last demonstration flight was performed by the Belarusian airline Belavia. The only commercial operator of Tu-154 aircraft in Russia in 2016 was the Alrosa airline, which has two Tu-154M aircraft in its fleet. According to unconfirmed reports, two Tu-154 aircraft, including the most old model this family, released back in 1976, is owned by the North Korean airline Air Koryo.
In February 2013, the serial production of the liners was discontinued. The last aircraft of the family, produced at the Aviakor plant in Samara, was handed over to the RF Ministry of Defense.
Major accidents of domestic Tu-154
02/19/1973, Prague, 66 dead
The Tu-154 plane was performing a regular passenger flight from Moscow to Prague, when, while landing, it suddenly went into a rapid descent, not reaching 470 m to the runway, crashed into the ground and collapsed. 66 people out of 100 on board were killed. This is the first incident in the history of the Tu-154 aircraft. The Czechoslovak commission could not establish the causes of the accident, only suggesting that during the landing approach, the airliner unexpectedly fell into a zone of turbulence, which led to a loss of stability. The Soviet commission came to the opinion that the cause of the disaster was the error of the aircraft commander, who accidentally changed the angle of inclination of the stabilizer due to the imperfection of the control system during landing.
07/08/1980, Alma-Ata, 166 dead, 9 wounded on the ground
The plane, flying on the route Alma-Ata - Rostov-on-Don - Simferopol, crashed almost immediately after takeoff. The plane demolished two residential barracks and four residential buildings, as a result of which nine people were injured on the ground. According to the official version, the catastrophe occurred due to a sudden atmospheric disturbance that caused a powerful downdraft air flow (up to 14 m / s) and a strong tailwind (up to 20 m / s) during takeoff, at the time of mechanization harvesting, with a high takeoff weight. in a high-altitude airfield and high air temperature. The combination of these factors at low flight altitude and with a sudden lateral roll, the correction of which briefly distracted the crew, predetermined the fatal outcome of the flight.
11/16/1981, Norilsk, 99 dead
The liner was completing a passenger flight from Krasnoyarsk and came in to land when it lost altitude and landed on the field, not reaching about 500 m to the strip, after which it crashed into a radio beacon embankment and collapsed. 99 people out of 167 on board were killed. According to the conclusion of the commission, the cause of the disaster was the loss of longitudinal controllability of the aircraft at the final stage of the landing approach due to design features aircraft. In addition, the crew realized too late that the situation was threatening an accident, and the decision to go around was not made in time.
12/23/1984, Krasnoyarsk, 110 dead
The liner was supposed to perform a passenger flight to Irkutsk when an engine failure occurred during the climb. The crew decided to return, but a fire broke out during the landing approach, which destroyed the control systems. The car crashed to the ground 3 km before runway number 29 and collapsed. The primary cause of the disaster was the destruction of the disk of the first stage of one of the engines, which occurred due to the presence of fatigue cracks. The cracks were caused by a manufacturing defect.
07/10/1985, Uchkuduk, 200 dead
This disaster was the largest in the number of deaths in the history of Soviet aviation and Tu-154 aircraft. Airliner performing regular flight on the route Karshi - Ufa - Leningrad, 46 minutes after departure at an altitude of 11,600 m, he lost speed, fell into a flat spin and crashed to the ground.
According to the official conclusion, this happened under the influence of a high non-standard outside temperature, a small margin in the angle of attack and engine thrust. The crew made a number of deviations from the requirements, lost speed - and did not cope with piloting the aircraft. An unofficial version is widespread: before departure, the crew's rest schedule was violated, as a result of which the total time the pilots were awake was almost 24 hours. And soon after the start of the flight, the crew fell asleep.
07.12.1995, Khabarovsk region, 98 dead
The Tu-154B-1 airliner of the Khabarovsk United Air Squadron, flying along the route Khabarovsk - Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk - Khabarovsk - Ulan-Ude - Novosibirsk, crashed into Mount Bo-Jausa, 274 km from Khabarovsk. The cause of the disaster, presumably, was the asymmetric pumping of fuel from the tanks. The captain of the ship increased the resulting right bank by mistake, and the flight became uncontrollable.
07/04/2001, Irkutsk, 145 dead
While landing at the airport of Irkutsk, the airliner suddenly fell into a flat spin and crashed to the ground. During the landing approach, the crew allowed the aircraft's speed to drop below the permissible speed by 10-15 km / h. The autopilot, switched on to maintain altitude, increased the pitch angle with a decrease in speed, which led to an even greater loss of speed. Having discovered a dangerous situation, the crew added a mode to the engines, deflected the steering wheel to the left and away from themselves, which led to a rapid increase in vertical speed and an increase in roll to the left. Having lost his spatial orientation, the pilot tried to take the plane out of the roll, but with his actions he only increased it. The State Commission named the crew's erroneous actions as the cause of the crash.
04.10.2001, Black Sea, 78 dead
The Tu-154M airliner of Siberia Airlines operated on the Tel Aviv - Novosibirsk route, but crashed into the Black Sea 1 hour and 45 minutes after takeoff. According to the conclusion of the Interstate Aviation Committee, the plane was inadvertently shot down by a Ukrainian S-200 anti-aircraft missile launched during a Ukrainian military exercise on the Crimean Peninsula. Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksandr Kuzmuk apologized for the incident. Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma acknowledged Ukraine's responsibility for the incident and dismissed the Minister of Defense.
08.24.2004, Kamensk, 46 dead
The plane took off from Moscow and headed for Sochi. During the flight over the Rostov region, a strong explosion occurred in the tail section of the liner. The plane lost control and began to fall. The crew tried with all their might to keep the plane in the air, but the uncontrollable airliner crashed to the ground near the village of Gluboky Kamensky District Rostov region and completely collapsed. The explosion in the plane was staged by a suicide bomber. Immediately after the terrorist attacks (on the same day, a Tu-134 plane exploded on a Moscow-Volgograd flight), the Islambuli Brigades terrorist organization claimed responsibility for them. But later Shamil Basayev said that he had prepared the terrorist attacks.
According to Basayev, the terrorists sent by him did not blow up the planes, but only hijacked them. Basayev argued that the planes were shot down by Russian air defense missiles, as the Russian leadership feared that the planes would be directed to any targets in Moscow or St. Petersburg.
08/22/2006, Donetsk, 170 dead
The Russian airliner carried out a scheduled passenger flight from Anapa to St. Petersburg, but over the Donetsk region faced a severe thunderstorm. The crew requested permission from the controller for a higher flight level, but then the airliner lost altitude, and three minutes later crashed near the village of Sukha Balka in the Konstantinovsky district of the Donetsk region.
"The lack of control over the flight speed and the failure to comply with the instructions of the Airplane Flight Manual (Flight Operation Manual) to prevent the aircraft from entering the stall mode in case of unsatisfactory interaction in the crew did not prevent the situation from becoming catastrophic.", - said in the final conclusion of the Interstate Aviation Commission.
04/10/2010, Smolensk, 96 dead
The presidential airliner Tu-154M of the Polish Air Force was flying on the Warsaw-Smolensk route, but when landing at the Smolensk-Severny airfield in a heavy fog, the airliner collided with trees, capsized, crashed to the ground and completely collapsed. All 96 people on board were killed, including the President of Poland Lech Kaczynski, his wife Maria Kaczynska, as well as famous Polish politicians, almost all the high military command and public and religious leaders. They were on a private visit to Russia as a Polish delegation to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the Katyn massacre. An investigation by the Interstate Aviation Committee found that all aircraft systems were working normally before hitting the ground; because of the fog, the visibility at the airfield was lower than the allowable for landing, about which the crew was notified. The reasons for the crash were the wrong actions of the aircraft crew and psychological pressure on him.
