The first major plane crash of 2017, which occurred on the morning of January 16 near Bishkek, was not the most typical. Most of the victims this time were not passengers and crew members, but residents.
A Boeing 747 transport aircraft of the Turkish company ACT crashed while landing at the Kyrgyz Manas airport. The liner fell on the village of Dacha-Suu, located 1.5-2 km from the airport runway.
In Dacha-Suu, at least 15 houses were destroyed, the inhabitants of which made up the majority of the 37 deaths known at the moment.
Living in the immediate vicinity of the airport, especially in the area through which the take-off and landing line of aircraft passes, is an unsafe thing. During construction air harbors everything is being done to minimize such a threat.
But sometimes new residential settlements in the danger zone appear after the airport starts operating. Sometimes it also happens in a different way - due to a lack of space, the airport is initially located near areas of mass development. In such cases, it remains to rely only on the skill of the pilots and the reliability of safety systems.
The unwritten law of pilots says that the crew must take the plane away from residential areas, even if such a maneuver could cost the lives of the pilots themselves.
But sometimes it is impossible to do it. During takeoff and landing catastrophic situation is developing so quickly that there is simply no time left for taking any action.
Despite the fact that a disaster scenario similar to the one that happened near Bishkek is not the most common, there are many tragic cases of this kind.
- © RIA Novosti / Tabyldy Kadyrbekov
© RIA Novosti / Tabyldy Kadyrbekov
© RIA Novosti / Tabyldy Kadyrbekov
© RIA Novosti / Tabyldy Kadyrbekov
© RIA Novosti / Tabyldy Kadyrbekov
© RIA Novosti / Tabyldy Kadyrbekov
© RIA Novosti / Tabyldy Kadyrbekov
© RIA Novosti / Tabyldy Kadyrbekov
© RIA Novosti / Tabyldy Kadyrbekov
© RIA Novosti / Tabyldy Kadyrbekov
1992 year. Boeing 747 cargo crashes on residential complex in Amsterdam
On October 4, 1992, an El Al Boeing 747-258F-SCD cargo plane operated flight LY 1862 on the New York-Amsterdam-Tel Aviv route. Six minutes after takeoff from Amsterdam airport, two starboard engines failed. The pilots turned the plane around and tried to land it at the Amsterdam airport, but the plane capsized and crashed onto the Gruneven housing estate in the suburb of Bailmere.
The liner crashed into the 6th floor of an 11-story residential building, destroying 31 apartments. A total of 43 people died, 39 of whom were residents of the destroyed building. In addition, 26 people on the ground were injured of varying severity.
The version of the terrorist attack, which was initially considered, has not received confirmation. The investigation established that the fastening of the third engine at the moment of maximum take-off loads could not withstand due to metal fatigue. The torn off engine crashed into the adjacent, fourth, tearing it off, and also damaging the wing surface. After that, it was impossible to keep the plane in the air.
1996 year. An-32 plane crashes into a crowded market in Kinshasa
January 8, 1996 in the capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (at that time bore the name of Zaire) Kinshasa, there was the largest disaster in terms of the number of victims on earth.
The Russian cargo plane An-32B of the Moscow Airways airline made a cargo flight from Kinshasa to Kakhemba.
The plane began to take off, reached the design take-off speed, but could not get it off the ground. The crew's actions to stop takeoff did not prevent the aircraft from rolling out of the runway and airport.
There was a market near the airport, filled with people. The plane flew into the crowd, rushed through the shopping aisles for about 240 meters and caught fire from a collision with market buildings.
Of the six crew members, only a flight mechanic was killed, the rest were evacuated. On the ground, 297 people died, mostly women and children, and another 253 were injured.
The bodies of the victims were so mutilated that only 66 people were identified. The unidentified victims were buried in a mass grave.
The Russian investigative authorities found that the flights of the International Airlines were carried out with significant violations, which led to the ban on the company's activities on January 4, 1996 by the commission of the Moscow Regional Air Transport Administration due to poor quality maintenance. aircraft... However, the company continued its activities illegally until the disaster in Kinshasa.
The reason for the disaster, according to investigators, was the flight with a takeoff weight exceeding the maximum allowable weight. According to calculations, takeoff weight aircraft during takeoff was 29,200-34,000 kg, that is, exceeded the maximum allowable 27,000 kg.
Zaire authorities accused the murder of two Russian citizens - the commander of the An-32 Nikolay Kazarin and co-pilot Andrey Guskov... The pilots were sentenced to two years in prison each.
1997 year. An-124 Ruslan cargo plane crashed into residential areas of Irkutsk
On December 6, 1997, the An-124-100 aircraft transported to Vietnam two Su-27UBK fighters assembled by the Irkutsk Aviation Plant. Three seconds after taking off from the runway of the Irkutsk airfield, one of the engines failed. Two more engines failed over the next 8 seconds. A transport plane with a left bank and low forward speed crashed onto house No. 45 on Grazhdanskaya Street. The tail of the plane significantly touched the house number 120 on Mira Street, and the rest of the wreckage - the building of the orphanage.
Tens of tons of fuel instantly ignited, leaving no chance for people to escape.
A total of 72 people died, of which 49 were on the ground, including 14 children.
The overload of the aircraft was officially recognized as the cause of the engine failure, although not all experts still agree with this version.
year 2000. Wreck of "Concorde" near Paris
July 25, 2000 supersonic passenger liner"Concorde" Air France performed chartered flight AFR 4590 en route Paris-New York.
During the takeoff run, the aircraft's left engine caught fire. It was no longer possible to stop takeoff, and the crew decided to take off, in order to then turn around and make emergency landing... However, the failure of another engine effectively deprived the pilots of the ability to operate the airliner. Two minutes after takeoff, the Concorde crashed into the small Hôtelissimo Les Relais Bleus in the municipality of Gonesse, about 3 kilometers from the airport. The liner was completely destroyed, the hotel building was engulfed in fire. The disaster killed 113 people - 109 on board the Concorde and 4 people who were in the hotel. Another 12 people on the ground were injured.
The investigation established that during the take-off of the airliner along the runway, the tire of the main chassis was damaged by a titanium plate, which separated from the engine American aircraft McDonnell Douglas DC-10 taking off in the same lane. Debris from a tire punctured the balancing fuel tank, causing a short circuit and ignition of the jet fuel, followed by a fire in the engine.
The disaster near Paris put an end to the history of commercial exploitation of the Concordes.
Interestingly, the supersonic "Concorde" died just 5 km from the place where in 1973, during a demonstration flight, another supersonic passenger airliner, Tu-144, crashed.
On June 3, 1973, during a demonstration flight at the Le Bourget air show, the Tu-144 suddenly went into a dive, and a few seconds later crumbled into the air and fell on the residential areas of the town of Goossenville located below it.
The crash killed all 6 crew members, as well as 8 people on the ground, including three children. 25 people on the ground were injured.
On December 6, 1997, an An-124 Ruslan military transport plane crashed in the aircraft construction village of Irkutsk-II. On board were two Su-27 fighters. According to official figures, 71 people died.
Airplanes and helicopters in distress rarely fall on cities, sweeping away everything on earth with fire and metal. This time, the 400th aircraft with 100 tons of kerosene crashed into the aircraft builders' settlement Irkutsk-II.
On December 6, 1997, the An-124 Ruslan military transport aircraft made a flight on the route Moscow - Irkutsk - Vladivostok - Vietnam. On board were two Su-27 attack aircraft, each worth about $ 30 million. The Ruslan flights in December were carried out in accordance with a government decision (April 1997), ordering the Ministry of Defense to transport four Su-27UBK and two Su-27SK aircraft to Vietnam. It was planned to use one An-124 Ruslan and one An-22 Antey for the operation. From December 1 to December 4, Ruslan made a flight on the route Irkutsk-II - Vladivostok - Phan Rang (where the airbase of the Vietnamese National Army is located) - Irkutsk-II, delivering two Su-27UBKs to the customer. The other two Su's of this modification were loaded into the transporter before the fatal take-off on December 6th.
The airport in Irkutsk is located next to residential buildings... For the time being, few people remembered this. In Russia, the airports of Omsk and Syktyvkar, as well as Bykovo, are located within the city limits. And dozens major airports of the world are within the city limits. For example, the main air gate England - Heathrow. And in Hong Kong, landing planes maneuver between the towers of skyscrapers. But in the "Irkutsk history" this circumstance turned out to be fatal.
According to eyewitnesses, Ruslan's engines began to malfunction during takeoff: pops, splashes, flames. However, the crew is no longer able to cancel the takeoff: as the professionals say, “the time for making a decision” has passed.
Unfortunately, the internal communications of the crew were not preserved - both flight recorders were in the epicenter of the fire and were badly damaged. Several episodes of negotiations with the Ruslan's crew remained on the flight director's tape recorder.
The crew commander requested take-off clearance.
“Flight director:“ Zero zero five, the ground is quiet, I allow takeoff. ”
After 1 minute 20 seconds from the ground informed: "Zero zero five, from the left engine exhaust flame."
The crew reported to the dispatcher about the failure of the two left-hand engines. The commander of the ship, Vladimir Fedorov, gave the order to restart the last failed engine - immediately the connection was cut off.
Ahead of the course at the Ruslan are the high-rise buildings of the aircraft builders' village, where there were thousands of people. The crew did their best to avoid hitting the skyscrapers. The pilots tried to reach a wide street, and even better - to a vacant lot. They managed to get the colossus away from the high-rise buildings, but the Ruslan tilted to the left.
At 14.40 the plane hooked its wing on a wooden two-story house; from this, the car turned 180 degrees, and it collapsed onto a brick five-story building, hitting a nearby orphanage. More than 140 tons of fuel from the aircraft tanks spilled on the ground and immediately ignited. Thus ended the last 25-second flight of the Ruslan ...
According to eyewitnesses, the plane fell completely silently. Fortunately, the children had a "quiet hour" at this time - they were in the building, and not on playground... Educators, nannies took almost everyone out, carried them out. Nevertheless, two girls, Yana Potanina and Lyuda Ptashkina, died of suffocation, and several more children were transported to the burn center.
108 people lived in the house at Grazhdanskaya, 45 (the house was completely destroyed). The initial information about 150 dead, which passed on television channels, turned out to be erroneous. A week before the disaster, the gas was turned off in the village, which made it possible to avoid large casualties and destruction. According to eyewitnesses, one man, escaping, jumped down from the fourth floor.
A few minutes after the disaster, fire engines arrived at the scene of the disaster and began to evacuate people. Firefighters carried out twenty-seven people from the burning apartments.
Soon a group of Irkutsk rescuers arrived, the Angarsk and Slyudyanka detachments arrived in time. On the morning of December 7, the Krasnoyarsk, Chita and Ulan-Ude rescuers came to the rescue, the cadets of the Higher School of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, police officers came to the rescue ...
On the night of December 7, Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin and the Minister for emergencies Sergei Shoigu, the Emergencies Ministry's operational group - twenty-two rescuers and four search dogs with them.
By morning, the fire was extinguished, but individual fires, mainly building ceilings and fuel, were still smoking and caught fire from time to time. Rescuers continued to clear the rubble in search of the bodies of the victims.
The tail section of the Ruslan, which remained practically intact, rested on a five-story building. In the afternoon of December 7, they decided to drop the tail of the plane to the ground.
All remnants of the destroyed Ruslan were promptly removed. Fragments of the plane, which could shed light on the cause of the disaster, were sent for examination to Moscow.
According to official figures, 71 people died. Rescuers found 47 bodies and 19 body fragments; identified 34. 27 victims turned for medical help, sixteen of them were hospitalized.
At first, nine versions were put forward regarding the causes of the disaster - from design and production defects of engines to substandard fuel.
Immediately after the tragedy, FAS specialists said that they had to find "the same broken wire or jammed mechanism that led to the disaster." It turned out to be not so easy to do this in a huge pile of twisted and burnt metal. In such cases, the final assessment of all factors is 80 percent objective.
Emergencies Minister Sergei Shoigu announced that "there is no fault of the crew," the Ruslan was piloted by experienced, well-trained pilots. The ship's commander, Vladimir Fedorov, had 2800 flight hours, 110 of which he flew in 1997. The co-pilot Vladimir Ivanov spent 4020 hours in the air, of which 240 hours in 1997. These are excellent indicators for military transport pilots.
True, some experts of the Federal Aviation Service believed that in extreme conditions the pilots turned off the wrong engines that had begun to malfunction. This is what caused the Tu-134 disaster two years ago near Nakhichevan.
An-124 Ruslan aircraft, with tail number 82005, was released by the Ulyanovsk Production Association on December 31, 1986. Assigned resource - 6 thousand hours; from the beginning of operation, it flew 1034 hours. Routine work was performed on November 1, 1996.
It is not known whether the disassembled machines were properly secured. Experts from Rosvooruzheniye and the Ministry of Defense later called the loading of the Ruslan with two fighters "a trick on the brink of a foul." The international practice of trade in aircraft previously did not know of cases when the Su-27 would have been transported on board the An-124, not counting the first flight of the same crew a week earlier. Su-27 has always been transported by sea or by railroad- safer and cheaper.
The technical director and chairman of the board of directors of the Volga - Dnepr airline (Ulyanovsk) Viktor Tolkachev did not agree with this opinion. After all, Volga-Dnepr successfully uses seven Ruslans, transporting oversized cargo all over the world. For example, the An-124 delivered five Caterpillar dump trucks in six flights from Chicago to Yakutia. Each such vehicle weighs 103 tons. In November 1997, Ruslan transferred a 65-ton "space" cargo to Baikonur from California; its main element is the 14-ton American satellite Aziasat.
The Irkutsk disaster is the fourth in Ruslan's track record. However, previous incidents (October 8, 1992, Kiev, test flight; November 15, 1993, Kerman airfield, Iran, commercial flight, October 8, 1996, Turin, Italy, commercial flight) had nothing to do with the tragedy of December 6. On tests in extreme conditions, the car was destroyed by the collapsed fairing of the nose radar. In Iran and Italy, it was the "human factor" that led to the trouble, not the defects in the aircraft.
Another reason, on which some members of the commission insisted, was the failure of the electronic fuel-regulating equipment, which led to the alternate shutdown of three engines.
FSB Director Nikolai Kovalev in an interview with Interfax said that an act of sabotage is not visible today, but there is a high probability of mixing 60 tons of summer fuel with winter fuel, since Ruslan was heading for warm Vietnam.
The version of low-quality fuel was closest to the manufacturers of D-18T engines - representatives of the Zaporozhye Motorsich plant, who participated in the work of the commission as experts. Four engines installed on the crashed plane had a resource reserve and went through the necessary routine maintenance.
The fuel samples, the wreckage of the aircraft and two flight recorders, which recorded the flight parameters, were delivered to Moscow. The Federal Aviation Service has made a preliminary conclusion on the fuel in the tankers of the Irkutsk-II airport; it meets the standards.
True, the samples delivered from Vietnam confirmed that a third of the refueling on the plane was without the corresponding winter additives. Since the Ruslan stood for more than a day with half-empty tanks in the cold, the water contained in the fuel turned into ice. Some of it remained in the fuel, and some settled in the form of frost on the walls of the fuel tank. When refueling, the fuel mixed even more with the ice. And after starting the engines, crystals began to settle on the grate of the fuel filter. The resulting ice plug during the transfer of the power plants to the forced operation mode broke and jammed the fuel distribution mechanism. This could lead to a stop of three engines at once. Although, according to experts, the D-18T design provides for automatic heating of filters. In addition, the system has a bypass route for fuel to enter the engine in the event of a blockage.
Head of the Russian Association of Operators air transport Evgeny Chibirev added that refueling is being carefully monitored, therefore, in his opinion, it is impossible to pump Ruslan with substandard fuel.
The following version is popular among the Irkutsk aircraft manufacturers. The authorities immediately excluded the fact of sabotage from all options - this is not accidental. Therefore, "Ruslan" was killed by someone's malicious intent. There were a lot of people crowding around during the loading of the plane - if they wanted to, anyone could do anything. By a strange coincidence, all Ruslan disasters, except for the first one that happened during the tests, occur on the eve of a lucrative contract or during the period of its implementation.
Another unexpected assumption was made by the oldest employee of the radioecological monitoring of the Hydrometeorological Service: “On the day of the disaster, the air temperature in Irkutsk was 26 degrees below zero with complete air calm. Such weather conditions an atmosphere with a low percentage of oxygen is formed over the city, that is, the air is saturated with exhaust gases and smog big city(it is known that there is a thermal power plant not far from the crash site). Low temperatures do not allow the hot air to rise upwards, as a result of which a temperature difference and air composition is created at the border of the meeting of the airfield with the city. According to numerous observations of experts, huge "bubbles" of warm air and smog hang in the city at an altitude of 90 to 300 meters, just on the takeoff trajectory of an air liner. " In the presence of all these circumstances, a flame breakdown could occur.
According to experts, this version looks very plausible, but to confirm or refute it, it was necessary to carry out a full-scale simulation of the situation by blowing the appropriate mixture into the engines right in the parking lot. Sources from the government commission did not rule out that the "heavyweight" failed all four engines at the same time. Although over the past 10 years, aircraft of this class have not reported failures of two or more engines.
Nevertheless, two "black boxes", deciphered on the spot by specialists from the Ministry of Defense, indicate problems in the engines. What was the reason for the refusal?
The Ruslan itself is a reliable aircraft, but it has what Marshal Shaposhnikov called the weak gas-dynamic stability of the engines. It happens that they fall into a regime called surging in aviation, that is, into a dangerous position when the flow around the compressor blades at the engine changes sharply; this leads to a drop in thrust, powerful vibrations and even destruction of the power plant. There have been such cases in the army aviation, but did not lead to accidents and disasters. This happens if the engines have not been run on the ground. The run eats up a lot of fuel and therefore is not always or completely carried out.
According to general director"Motorsich" Vyacheslav Boguslaev, there were indeed cases of surge on the An-124 in 1991-1993, but together with the Antonov ANTK the defect was eliminated. Recently, according to Boguslaev, the so-called off-design operation of engines has not been recorded.
General Director of ANTK Petr Balabuev did not exclude the “fuel” root cause of the tragedy. In his opinion, it happened due to water caught in the fuel, or violations of technology when the engines were warming up before takeoff. The loss of thrust could also be caused by birds caught in the air intakes of the engines.
By January 1998, three versions remained: an insufficient supply of gas-dynamic stability of the engines, malfunctions in the fuel supply system, malfunctions of the electrical and electronic systems of the giant aircraft.
The results of the examinations showed that the aircraft fuel was suitable for use. Its biocontamination could not have caused the catastrophe either - the number of microorganisms in the samples did not exceed the permissible values.
According to experts, out of the three remaining versions, a fuel system failure is also unlikely: it is reliable on Ruslans. Even when the aircraft is completely de-energized, the fuel supply should not be interrupted and is carried out autonomously. However, any catastrophe is most often the result of not one specific cause, but a whole chain of such.
On January 14, 1998, 40 days after the tragedy, Irkutsk residents held a memorial service for those killed in the An-124 Ruslan crash. Relatives and neighbors of the victims, victims, representatives of the regional and city administration gathered at the memorial sign in Irkutsk-II.
On December 6, 1997, an An-124 Ruslan military transport aircraft, due to successive failure of three of its four engines, fell on a residential area of the city of Irkutsk immediately after takeoff.
The plane took off from the Irkutsk-2 airfield on Saturday at 14.40 local time (09.40 Moscow time). On board were two Su-27 fighters assembled by the Irkutsk Aviation Production Association, which were to be delivered to Vietnam.
In less than half a minute after the plane was lifted off the runway, the first and third engines were switched off, after which the same thing happened with the second engine. An attempt to hold the aircraft on one remaining engine, undertaken by the crew under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Vladimir Fedorov, was unsuccessful, and the car, having entered the right bank, crashed onto house No. 45 on Grazhdanskaya Street. The tail of the plane significantly touched house No. 120 on Mira Street, and the rest of the wreckage hit the building of the orphanage located nearby. The instantly ignited tens of tons of aviation fuel also led to serious consequences of the disaster. A few minutes after the disaster, fire engines arrived at the scene of the disaster and began to evacuate people. Firefighters carried out twenty-seven people from the burning apartments.
On the night of December 7, 1997, the Prime Minister of the Russian Federation Viktor Chernomyrdin and the Minister of Emergency Situations of the Russian Federation Sergei Shoigu flew to Irkutsk, the emergency group of the Ministry of Emergency Situations - twenty-two rescuers and four search dogs with them.
By the morning of December 7, 1997, the fire had been localized, however, individual foci, mainly building ceilings and unburned fuel, were still smoking and periodically ignited. Rescuers began to clear the rubble and remove the bodies of the dead. The people left homeless were temporarily placed in a nursery. Organized the collection of things and products from the population.
The tail section of the plane, which remained practically intact, rested on a building adjacent to the burned down house and posed a threat to the working rescuers. In the afternoon of December 7, it was decided to drop the tail of the plane to the ground. The skeletons of the burned down houses had to be completely demolished.
Internal crew negotiations were not preserved - both flight recorders were in the epicenter of the fire and were badly damaged. The commission never came to an unequivocal opinion regarding engine failure. The reasons for their shutdown, both with the help of objective control means and experimentally, have not been definitively established. At the same time, experts have repeatedly expressed their opinion about the design flaws of the D-18T engines, manufactured by the Ukrainian JSC "Motor Sich" (these are the engines that were installed on the deceased An-124).
After the disaster, the Minister of Emergency Situations Sergei Shoigu announced that it was not the crew's fault. The plane was piloted by experienced, well-trained pilots. The ship's commander, Vladimir Fedorov, had 2800 flight hours, 110 of which he flew in 1997. The co-pilot Vladimir Ivanov spent 4020 hours in the air, of which 240 hours in 1997.
In 1999, in Irkutsk, on Mira Street, on the site of one of the destroyed houses, the Church of the Nativity of Christ was erected, the very first service in which was dedicated to the memory of the victims.
The material was prepared on the basis of information from RIA Novosti and open sources
Every year on December 6, exactly at 14.45, the sounds of a bell are heard throughout the Irkutsk-2 microdistrict. The townspeople remember the victims of the terrible 1997 plane crash. It was on this day and at this hour that the An-124 Ruslan military transport plane crashed onto a residential building 20 years ago ...
The tragedy unfolded in a matter of seconds. A huge An-124 with two Su-27 fighters on board, which was flying Moscow - Irkutsk - Vladivostok - Kamran, took off from the airfield in Irkutsk-2. As soon as the plane was in the air, three engines failed at once, after which it switched to a sharp descent.
When it just took off, I immediately noticed: something red flashed near the engine, similar to sparks, - says Sergei Belousov, who then worked as an assistant to the chief of the eighth fire department and ended up on the airfield. - I immediately shouted about this to my partners, we jumped into the cars, but at that moment we already saw thick black smoke ... We were at the crash site in a few minutes.
Later it turns out that the pilots tried to avoid touching residential high-rises to the last, but the wing of the plane caught on a two-story wooden building. From this, the ship turned around, and "Ruslan" fell right on the house at 45, Grazhdanskaya Street, and its huge tail remained on the five-story building on Mira Street. Everyone on board died: 8 crew members and 15 passengers, as well as 49 people on the ground, including 14 children ... Many were saved by accident. For example, on this Saturday in Irkutsk, the hockey "Sibskan" was playing, for the match of which against the "Ural Trubnik" 12 thousand people gathered at the stadium. Several dozen fans went to Trud and from home along Grazhdanskaya Street.
One of the first, who was at the site of the terrible fire that arose because of the spilled kerosene, was a resident of house No. 45 - then 25-year-old firefighter Yuri Starovoitov. That day he was on shift, and in the destroyed burning apartment ... his younger brother remained.
When we were driving, I already realized that the plane could fall on my house - even after 20 years it is difficult for Yuri to remember that day. - My brother was only 18 years old, he studied just to be an aircraft manufacturer. I worked on parsing debris all days. In the piles of wreckage, I found only a stack of charred photographs. They survived because they were on the couch.
Orphanage No. 1 was also seriously damaged, and the debris fell into it. At the time of the plane crash, 156 preschool children were sleeping.
Children ran out barefoot in the 25-degree frost, - says the director of the orphanage Galina Kryukova. - Well, the factory workers quickly provided us with buses and we took the children to boarding school No. 13, because it was impossible to stay in our building. Half of it was completely burnt out, and the other half was flooded with firefighters.
After the fire was extinguished, rescuers continued to spill the area with water, because the spilled kerosene could flare up at any minute. Well, it took almost a week to demolish the house on Grazhdanskaya Street and remove the hanging tail.
Local residents and rescuers have united, ”recalls Valery Perfilyev, deputy head of the State Fire Service Department. - Pensioners were freezing in the street, offered firefighters and cadets who were in cordon to go to their house to warm up, wore hot tea, pies, socks, gloves.
December 6, 1997 became a black date in the history of Irkutsk: during takeoff from the Irkutsk-2 airport, the An-124 plane fell on a residential area of the city.
An-124 "Ruslan" is a Soviet heavy transport aircraft, the largest and most cargo-carrying production aircraft in the world.
The board with the number RA-82005 was released in 1986, belonged to the 556th military transport regiment (Seshcha, Bryansk region). On that day, the Ruslan took off on the Irkutsk-Vladivostok-Vietnam route. In its cargo compartment were two new Su-27 fighters with a total weight of forty tons, assembled by a local aircraft plant. The fighters were bought by Vietnam for $ 30 million each.
There were 23 people on board, including eight crew members. The commander is a lieutenant colonel. The transporter was filled with 140 tons of fuel. Shortly after takeoff, which took place at 14.40 local time,
the plane's third, second and first engines failed one after another, after which it began to fall.
The attempt of the commander Vladimir Fedorov to keep the plane in level flight on one engine was unsuccessful, and the car, entering the right bank, fell on the residential buildings of the Aviastroiteley microdistrict and completely collapsed. The fall fell on building 45 on Grazhdanskaya Street, while building 120 on Peace Street was affected. In addition, the debris touched the building of the orphanage, two of its pupils died while in the shower.
In total, 72 people died in the crash, including everyone on board. Among them are 14 children. More than 79 families were left homeless.
Surrealistic footage from the crash site flew around the country that day: destroyed houses, smoke, aircraft wreckage and the giant tail of the Ruslan, leaning against a brick five-story building.
Has led to dire consequences a large number of fuel instantly ignited after impact. “It was tucked into a traffic jam, it had to fly far. The working conditions were rather difficult, since any spark could ignite the fuel again, ”recalled the details of the liquidation of the consequences of the crash, Sergei, who then held the post of head. He personally supervised the work at the crash site.
On the night of December 7, he flew into the city together with the head of government. The fire was localized only in the morning, then it was decided to overturn the tail of the plane stuck on the wall of the house, and to demolish the skeletons of the burned down houses.
Even on the eve of the prime minister's decree, a government commission was created to investigate the causes of the disaster, headed by the head of the Aviation Safety Service of the Armed Forces, Colonel General.
After the crash, Shoigu announced that the crew was not to blame: the plane was piloted by experienced, well-trained pilots.
The ship's commander, Vladimir Fedorov, had 2800 flight hours, 110 of which he flew in 1997.
It soon became clear that the internal negotiations of the crew members had not survived - the flight recorders were in the epicenter of the fire.
“The black boxes burned down. The film became unusable, and we will not be able to determine what was recorded on this film, ”explained soon the head of the Research Institute for Operation and Repair of Aircraft.
The commission did a great job, but could not pinpoint the exact cause of the sequential engine failure.
Meanwhile, a number of experts expressed their claims to the D-18T engines produced by the Zaporozhye machine-building design bureau "Progress". The same reason was pointed out in an interview by a former member of the commission, Major General of Aviation Boris.
“Three engines on the An-124 failed due to surge, low gas-dynamic stability.
The engine is 3 meters in diameter, the rotor rotates inside. It is necessary to make the gaps between the rotor blades and the casing so that they do not touch when heated to operating temperature. This was achieved by increasing the clearance, but deteriorating the gas-dynamic stability of the engine, - said MK Tumanov. - This problem was considered insignificant in aircraft. Like a runny nose in humans. And there were cases when the plane, whose engine had failed yesterday due to surge, was put on a flight the next day ”.
This version, however, was rejected on. The final conclusion of the commission has not yet been made public.
The Ruslan disaster in Irkutsk has become one of the largest in history modern Russia and the largest in terms of destruction and casualties with this type of aircraft.
