The final conclusions of the commission on the crash of Tu 154. “Unless it’s collective insanity. “A terrorist attack is not just an explosion”

Over the Black Sea, it became the 73rd airliner of this family lost as a result of aviation accidents. The total number of deaths in such incidents over 44 years reached 3,263 people. The Yuga.ru portal looked into the history of the aircraft’s operation and recalled the largest disasters involving it.

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 popular Soviet jet passenger aircraft.

The first flight took place on October 3, 1968. The Tu-154 was mass-produced from 1970 to 1998. From 1998 to 2013, small-scale production of the Tu-154M modification was carried out at the Samara Aviakor plant. A total of 1,026 vehicles were produced. 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 was a modification of the Tu-154B-2. 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, RA-85572 was transferred to the USSR Air Force.

According to some Tu-154 pilots, the aircraft is too complicated for mass production. passenger airliner 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 to replace it with modern analogues - the Boeing 737 and Airbus A320.

In 2002, EU countries, due to discrepancies in the level of permissible noise, banned flights of Tu-154s not equipped with special noise-absorbing panels. And since 2006, all Tu-154 flights (except for the Tu-154M modification) in the EU were completely banned. Aircraft of this type were operated mainly in the CIS countries at that time.

In the mid-2000s, the aircraft began to be gradually withdrawn from service. The main reason is the low fuel efficiency of the engines. Since the aircraft was designed in the 1960s, the developers did not face the issue of engine efficiency. The economic crisis of 2008 also contributed to accelerating the process of decommissioning the aircraft. In 2008, the entire Tu-154 fleet was withdrawn by S7, followed by Rossiya and Aeroflot the following year. In 2011, the operation of the Tu-154 was stopped " Ural Airlines" In 2013, aircraft of this type were withdrawn from the air fleet by UTair, the largest Tu-154 operator at that time.

In October 2016, the last demonstration flight was made by the Belarusian airline Belavia. The only commercial operator of Tu-154 aircraft in Russia in 2016 was Alrosa Airlines, which has two Tu-154M aircraft in its fleet. According to unconfirmed reports, two Tu-154 aircraft, including the most old model of this family, released back in 1976, is owned by North Korean airline Air Koryo.

In February 2013, serial production of the aircraft was discontinued. The last aircraft of the family, produced at the Samara Aviakor plant, was transferred to the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation.

The largest disasters 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 from the runway, crashed into the ground and collapsed. 66 people out of 100 on board died. This is the first accident in the history of the Tu-154 aircraft. The Czechoslovak commission was unable to establish the causes of the incident, only suggesting that during the approach to land the airliner suddenly encountered a zone of turbulence, which led to a loss of stability. The Soviet commission came to the conclusion that the cause of the disaster was an error by the aircraft commander, who, during landing, accidentally, due to imperfections in the control system, changed the angle of the stabilizer.

07/08/1980, Alma-Ata, 166 dead, 9 wounded on the ground

The plane, flying on the route Almaty - Rostov-on-Don - Simferopol, crashed almost immediately after takeoff. The plane demolished two residential barracks and four residential buildings, injuring nine people on the ground. According to the official version, the disaster occurred due to a sudden atmospheric disturbance that caused a powerful downward air flow (up to 14 m/s) and a strong tailwind (up to 20 m/s) during takeoff, at the time of mechanization removal, at a high take-off weight, in conditions high mountain airfield and high air temperature. The combination of these factors at a 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 airliner was completing a passenger flight from Krasnoyarsk and was landing when it lost altitude and landed on a field, not reaching about 500 m from the runway, after which it crashed into a radio beacon embankment and collapsed. 99 people out of 167 on board were killed. According to the commission's conclusion, the cause of the disaster was the loss of longitudinal control of the aircraft at the final stage of landing due to the design features of the aircraft. In addition, the crew realized too late that the situation was threatening an accident, and the decision to go around was made untimely.

12/23/1984, Krasnoyarsk, 110 dead

The airliner was supposed to carry out a passenger flight to Irkutsk when an engine failure occurred while climbing. The crew decided to return, but during landing a fire broke out, which destroyed the control systems. The car crashed to the ground 3 km before runway No. 29 and collapsed. The root cause of the disaster was the destruction of the first stage disk 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 terms of death toll in the history of Soviet aviation and Tu-154 aircraft. The airliner, performing a regular flight on the route Karshi - Ufa - Leningrad, 46 minutes after takeoff at an altitude of 11 thousand 600 m, lost speed, fell into a flat tailspin and crashed to the ground.

By official conclusion, this happened under the influence of high non-standard outside air temperature, small angle of attack margin and engine thrust. The crew made a number of deviations from the requirements, lost speed - and could not cope with piloting the aircraft. An unofficial version is widespread: before the flight, the crew’s rest schedule was disrupted, resulting in the pilots’ total waking time of almost 24 hours. And soon after the flight began, the crew fell asleep.

07.12.1995, Khabarovsk region, 98 dead

The Tu-154B-1 airliner of the Khabarovsk united air squad, flying on the route Khabarovsk - Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk - Khabarovsk - Ulan-Ude - Novosibirsk, crashed into Mount Bo-Dzhausa 274 km from Khabarovsk. The cause of the disaster was presumably asymmetrical pumping of fuel from the tanks. The ship's commander mistakenly increased the resulting right roll, and the flight became uncontrollable.

07/04/2001, Irkutsk, 145 dead

While landing at Irkutsk airport, the airliner suddenly fell into a flat tailspin and crashed to the ground. During the landing approach, the crew allowed the aircraft speed to drop below the permissible speed by 10-15 km/h. The autopilot, turned on in altitude maintenance mode, increased the pitch angle as the speed dropped, which led to an even greater loss of speed. Having discovered a dangerous situation, the crew added a boost to the engines, tilted 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 spatial orientation, the pilot tried to bring the plane out of the roll, but his actions only increased it. The state commission blamed the cause of the disaster on the erroneous actions of the crew.

10/04/2001, Black Sea, 78 dead

The Siberia Airlines Tu-154M airliner was flying on the route Tel Aviv - Novosibirsk, but 1 hour 45 minutes after takeoff it crashed into the Black Sea. According to the conclusion of the Interstate Aviation Committee, the plane was unintentionally shot down by a Ukrainian S-200 anti-aircraft missile launched during Ukrainian military exercises held on the Crimean peninsula. Ukrainian Defense Minister Alexander 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 a flight over the Rostov region, a strong explosion occurred in the tail section of the airliner. 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 Glubokoye, Kamensky district Rostov region and completely collapsed. The explosion on the plane was carried out by a suicide bomber. Immediately after the terrorist attacks (on the same day, a Tu-134 plane flying from Moscow to Volgograd exploded), the terrorist organization Islambuli Brigades took responsibility for them. But later Shamil Basayev stated that he prepared the terrorist attacks.

According to Basayev, the terrorists he sent did not blow up the planes, but only hijacked them. Basayev claimed that the planes were shot down by Russian air defense missiles, as the Russian leadership feared that the planes would be sent to any targets in Moscow or St. Petersburg.

08/22/2006, Donetsk, 170 dead

The Russian airliner was carrying out a scheduled passenger flight from Anapa to St. Petersburg, but encountered a severe thunderstorm over the Donetsk region. The crew requested permission from the dispatcher for a higher flight level, but then the airliner lost altitude and three minutes later crashed near the village of Sukhaya Balka in the Konstantinovsky district of the Donetsk region.

“The lack of control over the flight speed and failure to comply with the instructions of the Flight Operations Manual (Flight Operations Manual) to prevent the aircraft from entering stall mode due to unsatisfactory interaction among the crew did not prevent the situation from becoming catastrophic.”, said the final conclusion of the Interstate Aviation Commission.

04/10/2010, Smolensk, 96 dead

Presidential airliner Tu-154M Air Force Poland was operating a flight on the Warsaw-Smolensk route, but when landing at the Smolensk-Severny airfield in heavy fog, the airliner collided with trees, capsized, crashed to the ground and was completely destroyed. All 96 people on board were killed, including Polish President Lech Kaczynski, his wife Maria Kaczynski, as well as well-known Polish politicians, almost all the high military command and public and religious figures. They were heading to Russia on a private visit as a Polish delegation to the mourning events on the occasion of the 70th anniversary of the Katyn massacre. An investigation by the Interstate Aviation Committee found that all systems of the aircraft were operating normally before the collision with the ground; due to fog, visibility at the airfield was below acceptable for landing, of which the crew was notified. The causes of the disaster were cited as the incorrect actions of the aircraft crew and psychological pressure on them.

About the causes of the disaster. Initially, more than 15 versions of the causes of the crash were considered. Now there are two times less of them. Thanks to the decoding of the flight recorders, we can already say: there was no explosion on board. But, as experts noted, there may have been some kind of “mechanical impact.” Meanwhile, the head of the Ministry of Transport, Maxim Sokolov, said the following in his report: “It is obvious that there was freelance operation of the equipment.” However, the minister did not specify this statement until the final conclusions of the commission.

BY THE WAY

Rescuers from the Tu-154 crash site: The dead have the same injuries as the victims of the 2006 disaster

Since the day of the Tu-154 crash, rescuers have been working non-stop at the crash site in the Black Sea. They are raising from the bottom the bodies of the dead and the wreckage of the plane, on board at the time of the crash there were 92 people - crew members, artists of the ensemble named after. Alexandrova, journalists and Dr. Lisa.

Our photojournalist Vladimir Velengurin observes with his own eyes how divers work and how the search operation is progressing

Experts provided the latest information on the investigation into the causes of the crash. It was established: the flight lasted 70 seconds, the plane fell from a height of 250 meters. Representatives of the commission also explained what assistance is provided to the families of passengers and crew members.

Everything related to the plane crash, that is, all the parts and details of the aircraft necessary to analyze what happened, have already been raised to the surface. And, as representatives of the government commission stated, the main phase of the search operation has already been completed by this time.

It is premature to say what exactly happened during the flight. Representatives of the Ministry of Defense noted that the weather on the night of departure was good. In fact, darkness is the only factor that complicates the work of the pilots. The Tu-154 crew had sufficient qualifications to perform this flight. The aircraft commander had about four thousand hours of flight time, with more than one and a half thousand hours on aircraft of this type.

Now representatives of the investigation are working on analyzing the voice and parametric recorders. Their condition is satisfactory. We can already say for sure that the flight lasted a little more than a minute. The maximum height to which the plane rose was 250 meters. At the same time, its speed was about 360 kilometers per hour. Under these conditions, the crew recorded the occurrence of a certain critical situation. Judging by the negotiations in the cockpit, everything happened very quickly.

“The radio exchange was extremely short. You can imagine that the special situation developed within 10 seconds. Everything was quite standard, but one phrase from the commander, an analysis of this phase, speaks of the beginning of a special situation, the beginning of the development of a special situation. She doesn’t tell us anything else,” said Sergei Bainetov, head of the Aviation Safety Service of the Russian Armed Forces.

It will take the investigation a week and a half to collect and decipher the data. The commission promises to present final conclusions about the causes of the disaster within 30 days. Genetic testing will take approximately the same amount of time.

“The plane was almost completely destroyed upon impact with the water surface and subsequently the bottom of the Black Sea, which, of course, complicated the search operation. The disaster area has been fully examined. During search operations, 19 bodies have been discovered and raised from the surface of the water to date. The main identification will take place through mandatory genetic testing of the remains of the bodies. To do this, with the assistance of the Ministry of Defense, our doctors have already taken the necessary biological materials from all relatives of the victims,” said Transport Minister Maxim Sokolov.

At the same time, work began to organize comprehensive assistance to relatives. Representatives of the commission are negotiating with a number of banks to support the victims. It is already known that four banks - Sberbank, Alfa-Bank, VTB24 and Otkritie - decided to write off all the debts of those killed in a plane crash over the Black Sea. As for the required compensation, these payments have already begun.

“Payments, of course, will continue in the coming days before the New Year. In agreement with the management of our largest banks, a number of branches in Moscow will work to ensure payments and new year holidays. Therefore, work here will not stop even after January 1,” said Maxim Sokolov.

In addition to compensation, the commission is ready to consider the needs of each family and provide targeted assistance to people.

“A proposal was formed to talk to each family. Look, maybe measures will be taken to provide additional employment for family members, help with placement in kindergartens, help with education and other types of social assistance,” said Vsevolod Vukolov, head of the Federal Service for Labor and Employment.

Work in the Black Sea will continue as before - without interruption, even in New Year's Eve. Divers are still searching for the dead. These dives will continue until the last minute.

“Erroneous actions of the crew” are named as the cause of the Tu-154 crash over the Black Sea, which occurred on December 25, 2016. RIA Novosti, citing the Ministry of Defense, reported: “Based on the results of the investigation, it was established that the cause of the incident could have been a violation of the spatial orientation (situational awareness) of the aircraft commander, which led to his erroneous actions with the aircraft controls.”

Almost simultaneously with the RIA Novosti report, four pages of the report of the head of the Aviation Flight Safety Service of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, Lieutenant General Sergei Baynetov, on the results of the work of the “inquiry commission” were leaked onto the Internet aviation accident" The document is very similar to the real one. It is dated May 4, 2017 and has the reference number 137/2/883 DSP (the abbreviation DSP means for official use).

The report of Lieutenant General Baynetov describes in great detail the last flight of the crashed Tu-154, which was part of the 800th special purpose airbase of the Russian Aerospace Forces (VKS). At the same time, the last minutes are second by second. Key takeaways from the document: “The cause of the crash of the Tu-154 B-2 aircraft was a violation of spatial orientation (situational awareness) of the aircraft commander, which led to his erroneous actions with the aircraft controls, as a result of which the aircraft, during the climb, went into descent and collided with the water surface.” .

The document emphasizes that the aircraft commander, Major Roman Volkov “began to experience difficulties in determining his location on the airfield, associated with his idea of the upcoming take-off course”, not understanding which of the two runways of the Sochi airport would take off from.

At 5 hours 24 minutes 36 seconds the crew began takeoff with a heading of 238°. But already in the seventh second of takeoff, the aircraft commander (PIC) “emotionally began to ask the crew about the takeoff course.” Moreover, with the use of “obscene language,” which led to “to the PIC’s failure to control take-off ground parameters, to the distraction of crew members from performing their functional duties”.

As soon as he took off from the ground, setting the plane to a pitch of 15°, Major Volkov turned the steering wheel away from himself, slowing down the climb. And already at the 53rd second of the flight, when the plane had gained only 157 meters of altitude, the PIC ordered the flaps to be removed, although according to all regulations this operation is carried out at an altitude of at least 500 meters. At the same time, Volkov continued to tilt the steering wheel away from himself. Which led to the fact that at an altitude of 231 meters the plane switched to descent mode, losing altitude at a speed of 6-8 m/s. The siren sounded and the red display flashed in the cockpit. But none of the crew paid attention to this.

At the 70th second of the flight, when the Tu-154 was only 90 meters from the surface of the water, the PIC abruptly turned the aircraft, which was turning with a slight right bank of about 10°, into a steep left bank of 53°. The plane rushed to the surface of the water three times faster, at a speed of 20 m/s, and was already doomed.

At the 73rd second of flight, the Tu-154, at a speed of 540 km/h and a left roll of about 50, touched the surface of the sea with its left wing, fell apart and sank.

The report of Lieutenant General Baynetov indicated that the emergence of a critical situation on board the Tu-154 was facilitated by the “emotional and physiological fatigue” of commander Volkov, as well as his lack of “sustainable skills” in piloting in difficult situations.

Experienced military pilots, whom we asked to comment on the commission’s conclusions about the causes of the Sochi disaster and the document distributed on the Internet, similar to the report of the head of the Aviation Safety Service of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, agreed that there were many inconsistencies in both the official report and the “document.”

Our experts noticed that at the Sochi airport, planes taxi to the start behind an escort vehicle. In addition, the airport is equipped with illuminated taxiway and runway number signs. It is almost impossible to get lost at Sochi airport. If Major Volkov is already “lost” on the ground, a take-off ban should immediately follow.

It is impossible to explain what happened after takeoff:

“Unless there has been collective insanity,” said one of our experts. “The actions of both the captain and crew are absolutely inadequate. The actions of the rudders (especially the rudder - from the pedals) after takeoff cannot be explained normally. The flight speed indicated in the document allows the plane to stay in the air, but a normal, trained, tested and approved pilot for this type of flight could not allow such actions with the rudders.

The actual withdrawal of the co-pilot and navigator also cannot be explained:

— The crew sees that the PIC is making one fatal mistake after another, and does nothing. This is impossible in military transport aviation.

“We can assume that KPP-1 (the flight control instrument is the main instrument of any aircraft) failed,” another of our interlocutors suggested. — The “document” says about its direct indication, they say, it’s difficult. Yes, it's difficult. During retraining, on the simulator. And Volkov was an experienced pilot. In addition, KPP-1 has a backup attitude indicator AGR-72.

Our experts noticed that the “document” says that the landing gear was removed, but in all the photographs of the collected debris of the crashed Tu-154, the landing gear is in the extended position.

One of our experts, a military transport aviation veteran with more than 10 thousand flight hours, of which about 4 thousand as a Tu-154 crew commander, continues to adhere to the version that Novaya published back in March. Our interlocutor suggests that the full-time commander of the Tu-154 crew, Major Roman Volkov, acted as a co-pilot during takeoff, although he was in his seat, and the pilot who took off was not only not trained and not authorized to fly this type of aircraft, but also not included in the flight mission, senior in rank and position. Yes, he had extensive flying experience, but on other types of aircraft, for example on the An-72. On board the crashed plane there was indeed a senior instructor-pilot of military unit 42829, a lieutenant colonel. And he flew precisely on the An-72.

The “document”, positioned as the report of Lieutenant General Sergei Baynetov, is very similar to the real one, but our experts do not rule out that it is a fake, made “on the basis” of the real document.

The main stage of the search operation at the site of the Tu-154 plane crash near Sochi, which killed 92 people, has ended in the Black Sea. Representatives of the Ministry of Defense told reporters about the first results of the work of the commission to investigate the circumstances of the tragedy, the main ones are in the RBC review

Recovering the found fragment of a Tu-154 aircraft that crashed over the Black Sea off the coast of Sochi (Photo: RF Ministry of Emergency Situations/RIA Novosti)

A Tu-154 Ministry of Defense plane taking off from Adler crashed on the morning of December 25. The airliner disappeared from radar screens in the second minute of the flight and fell into the Black Sea near Sochi. The aircraft was heading to Syria, with 92 people on board: military personnel, artists of the Alexandrov Ensemble, journalists, and the head of the Fair Aid Foundation, Elizaveta Glinka.

Search operation

The main stage of the search operation at the crash site. Rescuers brought to the surface all the main fragments of the crashed aircraft, the fragments were delivered to a special site in Sochi.
Rescuers brought 19 bodies of the dead to the surface. 17 of them and all fragments of the bodies have already been delivered on a special flight to Moscow for identification. The body of only one crash victim has been identified and buried; for all others, we must wait for the results of a genetic examination.
During the search work, two “black boxes” were found. The first of them was discovered on the morning of December 27, the second - the next day. They were in good condition. The third flight recorder, located in the tail of the Tu-154, was destroyed.
Large fragments of the Tu-154 were discovered by space monitoring; a photograph of the crash area was published by the Space Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

Investigation

Three teams have been created to investigate the incident. “One works directly at Adler airport, the second at the 30th Research Institute, the third group of the flight safety service works at the 800th aviation base,” said Lieutenant General Sergei Baynetov, head of the aviation safety service of the Russian Armed Forces.
The pilots' actions during the Tu-154 crash will be simulated using simulators.
Preliminary data from the examinations will become known in January, and final conclusions about the causes of the disaster will be made after decoding the flight recorders.

Conclusions of the investigation and versions of the crash

The commission to investigate the Tu-154 crash over the Black Sea initially considered more than 15 versions of the disaster, now there are half as many.
The last flight of the crashed Tu-154 lasted about 70 seconds, the maximum altitude was about 250 m at a speed of 360-370 km/h.
The plane crash was not caused by an explosion on board, but the Ministry of Defense has not completely ruled out the possibility of a terrorist attack on board the plane. “A terrorist attack is not necessarily an explosion; it could also be a mechanical impact. This version is also being considered by the commission,” said Sergei Baynetov, head of the aviation safety service of the Russian Armed Forces.
The head of the Ministry of Transport of the Russian Federation, Maxim Sokolov, said that a terrorist attack is not considered as the main version in the investigation of the plane crash.
According to Sokolov, the Tu-154’s onboard equipment was operating abnormally. “Experts will have to find out what caused this, and why a special technical commission has been created,” he said.
It is known that in Sochi, where the Tu-154 landed for refueling, only representatives of border service, and all the passengers boarded the plane at Chkalovsky airport, near Moscow.
One of the phrases uttered by the commander of the crashed Tu-154 was about the beginning of the development of a “special situation on board.” “Everything was quite standard, but the commander’s phrase, one, analysis of this phrase speaks of the beginning of a special situation, the beginning of the development of this situation. So far she hasn’t told us anything else,” Baynetov said. According to him, the “special situation on board” developed for about 10 seconds.
A preliminary analysis of the first discovered flight recorder showed that the priority version of the Tu-154 crash was a pilot error. Previously, a source close to the investigation told Kommersant that the recorder recorded a failure of the flap retraction system, which provides additional lift on the wings of an airplane.

The fate of the Tu-154

Flights of Tu-154 aircraft in the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation have been suspended pending the initial conclusions of the commission investigating the circumstances of the disaster.
The operation of Tu-154B-2 aircraft will continue, said Sergei Baynetov, head of the flight safety service of the Russian Armed Forces. “I think that even after the incident the planes will be in service,” he said.