The crash of that 154 fresh versions. Igor Zhuravlev is a blogger. Mysterious "mechanical effect"

The FSB announced four main versions of the Tu-154 crash of the Ministry of Defense over the Black Sea: foreign objects getting into the engine, low-quality fuel, pilot error, or a technical malfunction of the aircraft. Pilots and aviation security experts speculated on what was most likely to cause the crash.

Forensic experts of the Investigative Committee arrived at the site of the discovery of the wreckage of the RA-85572 board - in the Black Sea near Sochi. This was reported by sources in law enforcement agencies.

“Tu-154 is one of the most reliable aircraft in the world. But this is a very strict aircraft to manage.”

A group of divers of the Ministry of Emergency Situations, a mile from the coast at the bottom, found the fuselage of the aircraft - this was reported in the Southern Regional Search and Rescue Detachment (SURSO) of the Ministry of Emergency Situations. Earlier it was reported that the wreckage was found in a strip of 400 meters at a depth of 25 meters, 1.5 km from the coast on the Khosta beam. Some fragments have already been brought to the surface.

Currently, search groups, including divers, are being pulled to the place where the wreckage was found. Now divers of the Ministry of Emergency Situations carry out repeated descent. “There are a lot of small details at the bottom and practically no large ones,” the source said.

Recall that during the crash of the Tu-154 aircraft of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation the day before, there were 92 people, including nine media representatives (journalists from Channel One, NTV and the Zvezda TV channel) and 64 artists of the Alexandrov Song and Dance Ensemble. Also on the passenger list is the well-known doctor Elizaveta Glinka (Doctor Lisa), who is for the University Hospital in Latakia.

Four versions of the FSB

On Monday, the Federal Security Service called . This is the ingress of foreign objects into the engine, low-quality fuel (resulting in a loss of power and failure of the engines), piloting error or a technical malfunction of the aircraft.

Board RA-85572 took off at a nominal speed - 345 kilometers per hour. Signs of a terrorist attack or sabotage aboard the Tu-154 have not been found at present, the FSB stressed.

As a source in the special services explained to TASS, after arriving in Adler, the plane was taken under guard. Only two border guards and one customs officer went on board, so the version of the bomb being brought in can be ruled out. In addition, the landing in Adler was unplanned, as refueling was originally planned in Mozdok, but the route was postponed due to weather conditions.

FSB representatives also reported that the crashed Tu-154 was carrying neither military and dual-use cargo, nor pyrotechnics.

Earlier, the head of the government commission to investigate the disaster, Minister of Transport Maxim Sokolov also said that the attack is not the main version of what happened. The technical condition of the aircraft, as well as piloting errors, are considered as reasons, the head of the Ministry of Transport said. Sokolov said that his department does not see the need to introduce additional security measures at the country's airports.

Non-synchronous retraction of wing mechanization

Test pilot, Hero of Russia Magomed Tolboev noted that it is technical problems that should be considered when determining the causes of the Tu-154 crash. The expert said that he discussed the disaster with colleagues.

All of them, as a priority version, note that “non-synchronous retraction of the flaps” could lead to the death of the aircraft. “In general, this is called “non-synchronous cleaning of the wing mechanization,” said Tolboev.

The interlocutor explained that in this case, flaps and slats are removed from one side of the wing, and not removed from the other side. “It turns out that the plane instantly turns around its axis. Neither the commander, nor anyone will have time to say a word, they are thrown there like a herring in a barrel,” summed up Magomed Tolboev.

There are no parallels with the Tu-104 crash of 1981

However, as Magomed Tolboev explains, parallels cannot be drawn between the Tu-104 crash in 1981 and the current Tu-154 crash. Such a situation, in which the cargo abruptly shifted to the tail, cannot be on the Tu-154, Tolboev noted. “The Tu-154 has a central compartment under the wing near the center section and the tail section, in addition, there is a centering machine, which itself determines the transfer of fuel, the presence of a threat on board,” the source explained.

“The aircraft sets its controls so that the centering is in one position,” the expert noted. “There was no automatic tracking system in the Tu-104, and generals and admirals could load whatever they wanted into the tail.”

Small plaque

Civil aviation expert, director of ICAA Flight Safety programs Viktor Galenko believes that the most plausible version of what happened is a human factor, not a technical malfunction. In Galenko, he noted that "the statistics of air crashes indicate a ratio of 8 to 2: out of ten such accidents, in eight cases the cause is the human factor, in two - everything else."

The Tu-154 aircraft after the repair was almost like new - the resource of this side was 11%, the expert emphasized. “Tu-154 is one of the most reliable aircraft in the world. It has a huge power-to-weight ratio and a very high degree of wing mechanization,” the interlocutor noted. “This allows the aircraft to take off and land in any conditions, in particular, in high altitude conditions, rarefied air and heat, which are much harder for pilots than the weather conditions that were in Adler.”

“But there is one detail: this is a very strict aircraft to manage,” the expert emphasizes. - The aircraft requires full training of pilots at the rate of the flight school. In the USSR, for the “carcass”, they first took an exam for the An-24 or Yak-40 from the pilot, as a co-pilot, then they made him the crew commander of the An-24 or Yak-40, then again, after a short retraining, they “put them in the right seat” (the second pilot - approx. VIEW) Tu-154, and only then, by the age of 40, the pilot could lead the crew of the Tu-154.

The crew commander of the crashed plane, pilot first class, Major Roman Volkov, is an experienced aviator, his total flight time was more than 300 hours, Galenko points out. “But here the annual flight time of the crew of this board was 200 hours, and this is already not enough,” the source continues. “At the same time, different crews flew on it, so the hypothesis of a small flight time of the crew on this board is confirmed.”

The crashed Tu-154 itself is “an aircraft from the Chkalovsky airfield, which was in a separate squadron of the Ministry of Internal Affairs,” the source explains, adding: “I know the squadron commander, since just a month ago I took schoolchildren there on an excursion.”

The main problem of the pilots of the "front sides" in almost all countries is a very small flight time of the crew, Galenko believes. “Ceremonial aircraft with high fuel consumption and comfortable cabins fly extremely rarely, the military pilots who fly them have a small annual flight time. And this greatly affects the level of crew training,” the source said. Back in the days of the USSR, pilots were forced to undergo simulator retraining even after vacation, but military pilots on these sides (“front sides” of the Chkalovsky airfield) have breaks in flights for more than one month, Galenko notes.

Piloting this aircraft is an inadequate task for pilots with low flying time, the expert concludes.

"Oncoming on takeoff, passing on the echelon"

The expert believes that adverse weather conditions could not be the cause of the disaster. “There were no dangerous weather events during the incident, the wind during takeoff was fair. At an elevation angle of 20 degrees, it was five meters per second,” emphasizes Galenko.

The peculiarity of the Adler airport is that takeoff and landing are carried out towards the sea. It is impossible to take off towards the mountains under any circumstances, there is fog, the expert adds.

“Unfavorable conditions would be a tailwind (takeoff is always carried out against the wind, the pilots even wish each other “oncoming on takeoff, passing on the echelon”), as well as heat - the plane takes off much better in the cold than in hot weather. However, even in the case of a tailwind and heat, the Tu-154 engine has a huge thrust reserve. There was no icing or thunderstorms, and other aircraft did not report high turbulence,” adds Galenko.

Weather conditions near the airport in Adler at the time of the crash of the Tu-154 are assessed as simple for piloting an aircraft, Roshydromet said, which was quoted by "". “At about five in the morning Moscow time, the temperature at the ground is +5, the wind is 5 m / s, visibility is 10 km. Quite normal weather conditions," the ministry said. The Sochi airport, from where the Tu-154 took off, continued to work as usual, media reported.

At the same time, according to the online scoreboard, four flights were canceled in Adler on Sunday morning.

Weather conditions have repeatedly become the cause of the death of aircraft around the world. On March 19 of the outgoing year, a Boeing 737-800 flying from Dubai crashed while landing in Rostov-on-Don. Due to bad weather, the airliner could not land after two attempts, and after leaving for the next circle, it crashed near the runway, killing 55 passengers and 7 crew members. The investigation into the causes of the crash continues.

On August 22, 2006, after a collision with a strong thunderstorm, a Tu-154M airliner crashed near Donetsk, flying Anapa - St. Petersburg. There were 170 people on board. The cause of the disaster was called the erroneous actions of the pilots when trying to bypass the storm front. On February 12, 2002, near the Iranian city of Khorramabad, an Iranian airline Tu-154 crashed with 119 people on board. The plane crash happened after bad weather.

According to the official version of the Tu-154 crash in Sochi on December 25, 2016, an orangutan turned out to be at the controls of the plane instead of a person, who began to pull the control sticks ridiculously, which led to the tragedy. If we draw a parallel with driving a car, it would look like this: the driver got behind the wheel, started off - and drove into a snowdrift. Passed back - and crushed three cars nearby. Then he drove forward - and crashed with all his dope into a dumpster, on which the trip ended.

Conclusion: either the driver was dead drunk - or something happened to the car.

But the Tu-154 recorders showed that the plane was in perfect working order. And to assume that the pilot began to take off in a dead form in front of other crew members, not suicides, does not work either. And his voice on the recorder is absolutely sober.

However, the plane crashed - allegedly as a result of inexplicable actions of the crew. Or is there an explanation - but the military leadership is desperately hiding it?

Cunning journalists unearthed that the plane may have been heavily overloaded - hence all the consequences. Moreover, it was not overloaded at the Adler airport in Sochi, where it made an intermediate landing, but at the Chkalovsky military airfield near Moscow, from where it started.

The weight of the excess cargo is more than 10 tons. However, at Chkalovsky, according to documents, this Tu-1542B-2 was filled with kerosene 10 tons less than a full bowl - 24 tons, as a result, the total weight of the aircraft was 99.6 tons. This exceeded the norm by only 1.6 tons - and therefore was not critical. The pilot probably noted that the takeoff there occurred with an effort - but there could be many reasons for this: wind, atmospheric pressure, air temperature.

But in Adler, where the plane landed for refueling, this refueling played a fatal role. The tanks of the aircraft were filled with fuel already under the cork - up to 35.6 tons, which is why its take-off weight became more than 10 tons more than the permissible one.

And if we accept this version with overload, everything that follows gets the most logical explanation.

The plane took off from the Adler runway at a speed of 320 km/h instead of the nominal 270 km/h. Further, the rise occurred at a speed of 10 meters per second - instead of the usual 12-15 m / s.

And 2 seconds after taking off from the ground, the commander of the ship, Roman Volkov, pulled the steering wheel towards himself in order to increase the take-off angle. The fact is that the take-off and landing trajectories are strictly defined at each airfield: landing takes place on a more gentle, take-off - on a steeper one. This is necessary in order to separate the planes taking off and going to land in height - without which they would constantly be threatened with a collision in the air.

But the increase in the angle of climb led to a drop in speed - too heavy an aircraft refused to perform this maneuver. Then the pilot, probably already realizing that some kind of pig was put on him in the form of excess cargo, gave the helm away from himself in order to stop climbing and thereby gain speed.

This happened at an altitude of 200 meters - and if the plane had remained in this echelon, even in violation of all the rules, the tragedy might not have happened. But Volkov piloted the car outside its permissible modes - which no one had done before him, since overloaded flights are strictly prohibited. And how the plane behaved in these conditions is hard to imagine. In addition, it is possible that that extra load, being poorly secured, also violated the alignment of the aircraft during takeoff.

As a result, a slight panic arose in the cockpit. The pilots began to retract the flaps ahead of schedule - in order to reduce air resistance and thereby gain speed faster.

Here began a dangerous rapprochement with the water, over which there was a take-off line. The speed was already decent - 500 km / h, Volkov abruptly took the helm to raise the plane, at the same time starting a U-turn - apparently, he decided to return to the airfield. Then the irreparable happened: the plane, in response to the actions of the pilot, did not go up, but crashed into the water, scattering into fragments from a collision with it ...

Such a scenario, based on data from recorders, is absolutely consistent - and looks much more plausible than Shoigu's delusional explanation that the pilot lost his spatial orientation and began to descend instead of climbing.

During takeoff, no spatial orientation is required from the pilot at all. In front of him are two main instruments: an altimeter and a speed indicator, he monitors their readings without being distracted by the views outside the window ...

You can also ask: how did an overloaded plane manage to break away from the runway? The answer is simple: there is a so-called screen effect, which significantly increases the lift of the wings at a height of up to 15 meters from the ground. By the way, the concept of ekranoplanes is based on it - semi-aircraft-semi-ships flying within these 15 meters in height with much more cargo on board than aircraft of equal power ...

Well, now the most important questions.

First: what kind of cargo was placed in the belly of this Tu - and by whom?

It is clear that these were not the lightweight medicines of Dr. Lisa, who was on this flight, and not an armored personnel carrier: in a passenger plane there is no wide port for the entry of any equipment. This cargo was apparently heavy and compact enough to enter through the cargo hatch.

And what exactly - you can guess anything here: boxes of vodka, shells, gold bars, Sobyanin's tiles ... And why they decided to send it not by cargo, but by a passenger flight - there could also be any reasons. From sloppiness on the failure to send a combat cargo, which they decided to cover up gradually - to the very criminal schemes for the export of precious metals or other contraband.

Another question: did the pilots know about this left cargo? For sure! This is not a needle in a haystack - but a whole stack that cannot be hidden from the eyes. But what exactly was there and what the true weight of it is - the pilots might not have known. After all, this is an army, where the order of the highest rank is above all instructions; and most likely that order was also provided with some kind of generous promise - with a hint of all sorts of intrigues in case of refusal. Under the influence of such an explosive mixture, a lot of malfeasance is committed today - when a forced person faces a choice: either earn decent money - or be left without a job and without pants.

And the famous Russian maybe at the same time, as they say, no one canceled!

Who ordered? Here, too, there can be a large scatter: from someone lieutenant colonel, deputy for armament - to Colonel General. Depending on what kind of cargo was driven onto the plane.

In short, in Chkalovsky the plane is overloaded, but this overload is compensated by incomplete refueling - and in Adler the tanks are already filled to capacity. Obviously, the calculation was to fly to the Syrian Khmeimim (destination) and back on their own fuel. And the fact that the commander of the ship agreed to these 35.6 tons of fuel in Adler speaks in favor of the fact that he still did not know the real magnitude of the overload. Fly it alone - you can still allow dashing daring, which Chkalov himself initiated in our aviation. But behind Volkov's back were his own crew of 7 people, and 84 more passengers, including the artists of the Alexandrov ensemble!

The fact that the Ministry of Defense in this case is not just obscure, but with might and main hides the truth - such facts speak.

1. Shoigu's version of "violation of spatial orientation (situational awareness) of the commander, which led to erroneous actions with the aircraft controls" does not stand up to criticism. For any pilot, not only with 4000 flight hours, like Volkov, but also with ten times less, takeoff is the simplest action that does not require any special skills. Here, for example, landing in difficult weather conditions is a completely different matter. The accident during the landing of the same Tu-154 from the Polish delegation near Smolensk is a typical example of the lack of skill and experience of the pilot. But when taking off on a serviceable plane, no one has ever crashed.

2. The decoding of the recorders, probably already in the first days after the tragedy, gave the whole alignment of what happened. An analogy with the same Polish case in 2010 is appropriate here: then, on the 5th day, the IAC (Interstate Aviation Committee) issued an exhaustive version of the incident, which was fully confirmed later.

The IAC has been stubbornly silent about the Adler disaster for 6 months. On his website, where detailed analyzes of all flight accidents are published, there are only two brief messages on the subject of Adler that the investigation is ongoing. And another significant passage:

“Resources of research and expert institutions have been attracted to investigate this catastrophe. Among them is the Interstate Aviation Committee, which has extensive experience in investigating accidents with Tu-154 aircraft and the necessary resources to assist in expediting the investigation. At the same time, the IAC informs that the official comments on this investigation are provided exclusively by the Russian Ministry of Defense.

That is, read, "we were shut up, sorry."

3. Naturally, the Minister of Defense in the very first hours, if not minutes after the disaster, found out what kind of cargo was on board the crashed Tu. And the incredibly long search for the wreckage of the aircraft, which added absolutely nothing to the information of the recorders, suggests that they were looking for that very secret cargo. And not at all the truth, which was clear to the military immediately.

Well, and another question: why do the military, led by their minister, hide this truth like that? And from whom - from Putin himself or from the people?

Well, to hide it from Putin, I very much doubt it: he does not look like a person who can be circled around the finger like that. So they are hiding from the people. This means that this truth is such that it somehow terribly undermines the prestige of our military.

That is, either some lieutenant colonel, a complete idiot, loaded into a passenger plane something that should not have been close to it. And then a shadow on our entire army, in which such idiots are on horseback that they can ruin even the backbone of the Alexandrov ensemble with their idiocy.

Either the colonel-general, who enters the very head, is involved - and then also shame and disgrace: it turns out that through the change of Serdyukov to Shoigu, our army has not been cleansed of general outrage?

And the last thing. Remember, when we watched the film "Chapaev" as children, many of us shouted in the hall: "Chapaj, run!" Just as spontaneously, today, when everything has practically become clear with the Adler tragedy, I want to shout to the pilot Volkov: “Don't take this load! And he took it - do not take off above 200 meters above the sea!

After all, if you sort it out by a calm mind, which was not praised by a pilot who fell into a storm of circumstances, he had a chance of salvation. Namely: when reloading the aircraft, do not even try to follow the instructions that oblige you to rise to such and such a height at such and such a distance from the airfield. Break it to hell, get a reprimand for it, even if it's dismissal - but save your own life and the lives of others. That is, fly at a minimum altitude, producing fuel - and when the weight of the aircraft decreases in an hour and a half, start lifting.

Another thing that again comes to mind is that if you decide to return to Adler, do a U-turn not by a standard turn with a side roll, which dumped the plane into the sea, but by the so-called “pancake”. That is, with one rudder - when the plane remains in horizontal plane, and the turning radius at the same time greatly increases: a maneuver that is practically not used in modern aviation.

Yes, only this chance, which could save this plane, in the future would still be ghostly and deadly. Suppose Volkov could have managed to get out of the disastrous situation set by the organizers of his flight. Then the next time he or his colleague would be hung not 10, but 15 extra tons of some “unspecified” cargo: after all, appetites grow as their satisfaction. And the tragedy would have happened anyway - if not in this case, then in the next one, if its causes were preserved.

God grant that, as a result of this catastrophe, someone in our armed forces gives a proper blow to the brain, putting an end to the outrages that led to the inevitable outcome.

Alexander Roslyakov

What led to the crash of the Tu-154?

Not all experts support the version that flap problems could be the only cause of the Tu-154 crash.

People have noticed that the authorities are increasingly blaming the "human factor" - the dead pilots - for plane crashes.

Among the main reasons for the fall of the Tu-154 near Sochi, the version of a malfunction or error when cleaning the flaps came to the fore. However, not all experts support this view. Some of them are sure that some flaps could not be the only cause of the disaster, others point out that emergency situations could happen to the flaps for various reasons, and, in general, it is premature to draw conclusions.

The plane of the Ministry of Defense Tu-154 crashed on Sunday, December 25, over the Black Sea. 92 people died. According to the route, he was supposed to fly from Moscow to Syrian Latakia with refueling at Mozdok airport. However, weather conditions forced us to change the route, and the plane landed at the Adler airport. Here it was refueled, and at 05:25 Moscow time the plane took off from Sochi, and already at 05:40 it disappeared from the radar screens.

Less than two hours after the loss of communication with the crew, news agencies reported the incident. At the same time, it became known that among the passengers were journalists and musicians, including the Alexandrov Ensemble, which was supposed to perform in front of the military at the Khmeimim airfield with a New Year's concert program. A little later, information appeared that the doctor Elizaveta Glinka, known as Doctor Lisa, was flying this flight to Syria.

The aircraft, built in 1983, has flown 6689 hours. The last repair, according to the military, took place in December 2014, and in September 2016 - scheduled maintenance. On that tragic day, there were 84 passengers and 8 crew members on board.

All search and rescue services of the Ministry of Defense and other departments were involved in the search for the aircraft. An oil slick was found 6-8 kilometers from the shore. Rescue boats have been dispatched to the area. Even then, experts expressed the opinion that "those on board the Tu-154 had practically no chance of surviving." A criminal case was initiated into the crash. On behalf of the chairman of the Investigative Committee Alexander Bastrykin, the case was transferred to the central office of the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation.

A few hours after the crash, rescuers found the first wreckage of the Tu-154 in the Black Sea. Their dispersion was relatively large: some fragments were picked up 1.5 km from the coast, the landing gear of the aircraft was found 6 km from the coast, and some debris and personal belongings of passengers were up to 15 km from the ground.

At 10:16 a.m., the Ministry of Defense released a list of passengers and crew members. The official representative of the military department, Major General Igor Konashenkov, said that they had found the first dead. The body was found six kilometers off the coastline of Sochi and taken aboard a rescue vessel.

Experts initially considered two reasons as the main versions of the fall of the Tu-154 - a technical malfunction of the aircraft and piloting error. The version of the malfunction immediately came to the fore. The pilots' error was considered "unlikely" as they had "extensive experience in operating this type of aircraft and considerable flying hours". Weather conditions in the crash area were also favorable. However, even then, among the possible causes of the crash, experts named the non-synchronous retraction of the flaps, which occurs if there is a break in the wires.

By 15:00 Moscow time, 10 bodies were removed from the water, some of them in the form of fragments. Sochi blogger Alexander Valov shared the opinion of the Ministry of Emergency Situations - if someone survived directly in a plane crash, then it is almost impossible to survive in icy water.

Almost immediately, the network began to discuss the version of the attack. By evening, a video of a bright flash in the sky, recorded by one of the Sochi video cameras, appeared on YouTube. However, sources of news agencies in the special services said that the version of the crash of the liner as a result of a terrorist attack is not among the priorities.

No one knew in advance that the plane would refuel in Sochi, and not in Mozdok. Only two border guards and one customs officer got on board in Adler, and only the navigator got off the plane to control the refueling. Power was not supplied on board, and refueling was carried out by regular personnel.

On Monday, the sonar of one of the rescue ships recorded about 1.5 km from the coast at the bottom of a structure similar in outline to the fuselage of an aircraft. At the crash site of the plane at a depth of 17 meters, the first of the flight recorders was also found.

On Tuesday, federal media sources reported that no traces of explosives and evidence of external impact on the liner were found on the bodies of the dead, as well as on fragments of the aircraft. At the same time, sources said that the video of the flash near the crash site was made almost half an hour after the Tu-154 crash.

By the middle of the day, all the key elements of the aircraft were found, the location of two more flight recorders was established.

By evening, the technical data were released. It became known that the crashed plane fell into the Black Sea at a speed of over 500 km/h. The accident occurred when the pilots removed mechanization. In this case, the aircraft was flying with a large pitch angle. Apparently, it fell off the echelon during the maneuver to the right. As a result, at the end of the turn, he collided with the surface of the water with a left roll. The version of the disaster associated with the piloting error of the aircraft has become a priority.

On Wednesday, the pro-Kremlin portal Life released an alleged fragment of a transcript of last-minute conversations between Tu-154 pilots before the crash. From these materials it follows that an emergency situation occurred with the flaps of the aircraft. The co-pilot allegedly says: “Take the racks, commander” and immediately after that exclaimed “Wow, e-my!”, then the alarm sounds, and the co-pilot shouts: “Flaps, ... what the ...!”. Further, he informs the commander that the plane is falling. A ground proximity warning also sounds. However, other sources question the authenticity of this record.

Meanwhile, Viktor Gorbachev, general director of the Aeroport association of civil aviation, considers the version of the Tu-154 crash due to problems with flaps to be very doubtful. As the expert told a Rosbalt correspondent, there is a possibility of such a reason, but it is minimal.

“We must not forget that the plane had already been flying from Moscow for two and a half hours, and there were no problems with the flaps. Therefore, I don’t really believe in such a version,” Viktor Gorbachev noted. The expert recalled that initially there were up to 7-8 versions, but, in his opinion, now three remain the most likely. “The first version is a problem with kerosene. But they allegedly checked the kerosene, and everything turned out to be normal there. The second version is the separation of the engine blades and the explosion of the engine. And the third version: an overload was possible, ”Viktor Gorbachev listed.

Aviation expert, flight safety specialist Alexander Romanov agrees with this opinion. As he told Rosbalt, problems with flap retraction could not be the only cause of the crash. “Flaps could be the cause, but in combination with other reasons: centering, offsets, overloads,” Alexander Romanov specified.

The aviation expert stressed that he does not consider it possible to take "seriously" the transcript of the pilots' dialogue that appeared in the media. “People who deciphered the voice recorder do not have the right to publish it. It's even illegal. Therefore, this is still an unofficial version and even resembles some kind of “stuffing,” said Alexander Romanov.

Oleg Smirnov, president of the Partner of Civil Aviation Foundation, also believes that flap problems could have been the cause of the crash, but he has serious doubts about this. The Honored Pilot of the USSR told the Rosbalt correspondent that one should still wait for the official conclusions of the commission. “The beginning of the catastrophic situation occurred in the air exactly where the flaps are retracted during takeoff in standard mode. It is not difficult to calculate this, knowing the take-off time and how long the plane has been in the air,” Oleg Smirnov specified.

The expert drew attention to the fact that in this area there have already been cases when planes ended up on the bottom of the Black Sea. This is an Il-18 in Soviet times and an Armenian airbus in 2006. All these disasters were also associated with a loss of speed and the aircraft stalled into a tailspin. He explained that the temporary point of retracting the flaps is most conducive to such a disaster, but there are options for what exactly happened to them.

“One of the options is to take off without extending the flaps, which at a certain height caused the aircraft to lose speed. Another variant of an emergency situation is possible, given that on the Tu-154 the landing gear and flap controls are located nearby. If, at altitude, instead of retracting the landing gear, the pilot pressed the flaps retracting lever, then this is already a sentence. The third variant of a catastrophic situation: when it is necessary to retract the flaps, but they did not retract for some reason. And, finally, non-synchronous retraction of the flaps is likely. Both left and right must be removed absolutely synchronously. Non-synchronous cleaning leads to disasters, up to the point that the plane can turn over on its back, ”said Oleg Smirnov.

The honored pilot emphasized that the gossip that appeared in the media and the presentation of possible dialogues between the Tu-154 pilots did not at all reveal the true reason for what happened. The commission has the right to make final conclusions only after lifting the wreckage of the aircraft and scrupulous study.

Test pilot, Hero of the Russian Federation Magomed Tolboev noted that the cause of the crash could be related to the mechanization of the wing. As the expert told the Rosbalt correspondent, he adhered to this version from the first day of the disaster.

“Either there was an asynchronous retraction of the flaps, or there was a destruction of the flaps due to excess speed: the speed is limited when retracting the flaps,” Magomed Tolboev specified, noting that the final cause could be established after studying the onboard information sources.

The society is actively discussing the incident, but people do not trust the sources of the pro-government media and the official reports of departments. The Russians noticed that the authorities are increasingly blaming the "human factor" - the dead pilots - for plane crashes. As a result, further investigation becomes meaningless, and other likely perpetrators of the emergency, who may have remained on the ground, go unpunished. So it's easier - to blame everything on those who cannot say a word in their defense.

Dmitry Remizov

The Tu-154 aircraft of the Russian Ministry of Defense, which crashed in the Black Sea near Sochi, was technically sound. Sergey Baynetov, the head of the flight safety service of the Russian Armed Forces, stated this last night on the air of the Russia 24 TV channel.

Thus, the defense department practically with its own hands cut off one of the most preferred versions of the terrible catastrophe over the Black Sea, which claimed the lives of 92 citizens of the Russian Federation.

Whether this statement is actually true or not, the investigators and numerous experts thrown into the investigation of the Sunday catastrophe will have to find out. Everyone else has to either trust the arguments of experts (which during yesterday's day differed exactly the opposite), or try to compare the available indisputable facts themselves. It is possible that in the foreseeable future this will be the only way to find at least some explanation for what happened, and at the same time an occasion to think about its consequences.

Why is this needed? Probably, then, to try to find the truth, the desire for which has always been characteristic of a reasonable person.

From version to sabotage

At the moment, the investigation is considering several versions of what happened at once:

aircraft technical malfunction,

weather factor,

Human factor (pilot/controller error),

Note that we are not trying to put forward our own versions, but only evaluate and compare existing ones.

Technology and weather

So, if you believe the words of Sergei Baynetov, and there are no reasons not to trust them, the first reason - a technical malfunction - is unlikely. Tu-154 is a rather old car, but it is extremely reliable. Given the large number of produced aircraft of this brand, the number of accidents that occurred with it is very significant. However, in relative terms, it is by no means anomalous, as with some other, less successful machines. Moreover, even a cursory analysis of the accidents with the Tu-154 (all data is given on the page dedicated to the Tu-154 on Wikipedia) that led to their death suggests that they had little in common with what is already known about incident with the aircraft of the Ministry of Defense.

There is no reason to sin on an engine failure or a bird getting into it. The Tu-154 is equipped with three engines at once, which eliminates the possibility of a disaster if one of them fails. Even having lost two engines at the same time (which is unlikely), the Tu-154 would hardly have instantly collapsed in the air, as it (judging by the comments of experts) happened to the aircraft of the RF Ministry of Defense.

The weather factor also, most likely, should be dismissed, since the weather at the time of the accident, according to all sources, was quite suitable for the take-off of aircraft of this class.

Human factor

As for the human factor, which, we venture to assume, will be declared the true cause of the disaster, there are also many reasons for doubt. First, as many experts said just yesterday, the pilots of the Ministry of Defense are highly qualified and have extensive experience in flying this type of aircraft. And besides, the main "basic scenarios" of air crashes due to the fault of the crew have long been well known and bear little resemblance to the scenario of yesterday's accident. The Tu-154 is a fairly simple and easy-to-handle car, and in order to “drop” it by mistake, an unskilled crew needs to make their “efforts” for quite a long time. The plane of the Russian Defense Ministry died almost instantly.

Bomb or MANPADS?

The version of the terrorist attack, despite the seeming impossibility of such a scenario (given the status of the board), suddenly begins to look very plausible.

First of all, the similarity with last year's crash of a Russian passenger liner over Sinai is striking, when communication with the aircraft was cut off just as instantly and unexpectedly as yesterday over Sochi. Both aircraft almost immediately collapsed in the air, with no indication of any attempts by the crew to save the aircraft.

In the first and second cases, signs of an explosion on board are visible in the disaster scenario. The only difference is that in the first one it has already been proven.

Sergei Gruzd, Chairman of the Public Council at the Interregional Investigation Department for Transport of the Investigative Committee of Russia, commented on this version in an interview with RBC very reasonably and skillfully. According to the expert, an external impact could have been exerted on the aircraft: the aircraft could have been attacked from a portable anti-aircraft missile system (MANPADS) or an explosive device could have worked in its cabin.

Sergei Gruzd explains his version by the fact that in the event of technical problems on board, the crew would have managed to report the incident to the ground, but in the case of the Tu-154 crash, no signals were received by dispatchers, and its connection with the ground disappeared almost instantly.

According to the expert, the version of the terrorist attack cannot be omitted, among other things, because of the peculiarities of the access control in Chkalovsky, from where the Tu-154 began its fatal flight. According to him, at airfields of this type, where, along with the aircraft of civil airlines, there are passenger planes of the Ministry of Defense, the Ministry of Emergency Situations and special services, there is a special procedure for letting passengers on board. And if at an ordinary civilian airport people are examined several times before departure, and their luggage and outerwear are carefully checked, then passengers can be allowed to fly on a service board only after checking their last name with the landing list.

Experts also express the version of the transfer to one of the passengers or crew members of a “package” with an explosive device planted in it, allegedly for someone from those in Syria. The attackers could deliver the fatal “package” both in Chkalovsky and Adler during the refueling of the aircraft.

The version with the influence of an “external factor” was also confirmed by civil aviation pilot Vladimir Kormuzov. "Taking into account the weather conditions and the fact that the aircraft belonged to the Ministry of Defense, as well as the fact that it was heading to Latakia and bearing in mind the situation in the world, this could have been an external influence," Kormuzov said.

Declaration of war?

Of course, the scenario with the shelling of the Tu-154 from MANPADS, cited by Sergei Gruzdem, does not look very plausible, if only because the trace from the fired missile would be clearly visible from the ground and from the air, which cannot be said about the possible carrying on board of an explosive device. In any case, the version with an explosion on board seems quite plausible, especially given the nature of last year's tragedy in Sinai.

And this is where the saddest part begins. If a terrorist attack is the cause of the death of the RF Ministry of Defense aircraft with such a bright and representative composition of passengers, there are reasons to take a different look at many events that have taken place in recent days. First of all, the capture of the Syrian Aleppo after long battles, the death of the Russian ambassador to Turkey, whose killer shouted the words “for Aleppo”, and the destination of yesterday's fateful Tu-154 flight.

Putting it all together and conditionally accepting the terrorist attack as the main version of yesterday's catastrophe, one can come to the disappointing conclusion that both the assassination of the ambassador in Turkey and the death of the military board with artists, journalists and an excellent doctor are nothing more than a declaration of war by Russia - terrible and bloody .

In conclusion, we want to repeat once again that we do not put forward our own versions, but only try to analyze and draw conclusions from the existing ones.

The FSB named four main working versions of the crash of the Tu-154 of the Ministry of Defense. This is "foreign objects entering the engine, low-quality fuel, which caused a loss of power and failure of the engines, a pilot error, a technical malfunction of the aircraft."

"Signs and facts indicating the possibility of a terrorist act or sabotage on board an aircraft have not been received at the present time," Interfax quotes a message from the FSB Public Relations Center. It was established that there were 150 kg of cargo on board, including food and medicine, but there were no military and dual-use cargo or pyrotechnics among them. It also follows from the report that the landing of the liner in Sochi was unplanned, it was assumed that it would refuel in Mozdok, but there were adverse weather conditions there on Sunday night and the board was redirected to Adler. Upon landing, the aircraft was taken under guard by the military and border guards, during refueling, one officer of the Border Guard Service of the FSB of Russia and one officer of the Sochi customs boarded, and the crew commander and flight engineer got off the plane to control the refueling.

Previously, the version of the attack was called unlikely by both the military and the Ministry of Transport. Presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov on Monday afternoon said that so far “none of the versions are being developed” and the version of the terrorist attack is not in the forefront. The military also rejected the possibility of a malfunction of the aircraft, which, although not new, had a reserve flight resource and underwent several overhauls.

The investigation has established eyewitnesses of the plane crash and is studying the recording of the video recorder, the FSB also said. On Sunday, media reported that surveillance cameras filmed a flash over the Black Sea near the Sochi airport. An Interfax source at the emergency response headquarters said that the outbreak occurred half an hour after the aircraft disappeared from radar screens and was not related to the crash. At headquarters, the recordings of the outbreak were carefully studied, he added. Assumptions that an emergency situation up to an explosion could allegedly have occurred on board, he called premature: “It is necessary to raise the engines to the surface and study their condition. It is also necessary to carefully study the data from the radar and the information stored on the flight recorders. Only after that any objective versions can be built.”

Tu-154 crash of the Ministry of Defense

Earlier it was reported that the Tu-154 did not get in touch when it was at a distance of 6250 m from the end of the airport runway. Divers found the hull of the liner on Monday afternoon at a distance of 1.7 km from the coast at a depth of 27 m, an Interfax source said. Before that, it was discovered by sonar. According to preliminary data, the aircraft was badly damaged. According to the interlocutor of the agency, a radio beacon was put up at the spot where the aircraft was found, and the zone of the search operation was localized. The black boxes of the aircraft, which, according to Kommersant, were not equipped with radio beacons for reasons of secrecy, were not found at 14.30 Moscow time. In the morning, the Ministry of Defense reported that separate fragments of the aircraft hull, the bodies of 11 people and 154 body fragments were found, the search was hampered by the complex bottom topography and a wide range of depths. According to TASS, the fuselage is located at a distance of 1.5 km in the Black Sea abeam Khosta.

Several of the dead passengers, but not all of them, were wearing life jackets, a source informed about the search operation told RIA Novosti. According to him, this means that people in vests were preparing to evacuate.

The Russian Ministry of Defense soon denied rumors about life jackets on the passengers of the crashed Tu-154. “All the rumors, citing anonymous sources, that the passengers of the crashed Tu-154 aircraft were allegedly wearing life jackets are shameful insinuations that are absolutely untrue,” Interfax quoted the ministry as saying.

Investigators seized documents on the fallen Tu-154 at the Samara OJSC Aviakor - Aviation Plant, Interfax was told in the press service of the Russian Machines holding. “Employees of the enterprise who participated in the work on the aircraft provide the investigators with the maximum possible assistance,” the representative of the enterprise assured and explained that studying the technical documentation in such cases is a standard procedure.

The Ministry of Defense previously reported that the dead aircraft was released in 1983, the last repair of the aircraft took place on December 29, 2014, and in September 2016 its scheduled maintenance was carried out. The board belonged to the 223rd flight detachment of the Ministry of Defense, which operates passenger aircraft in the interests of the military department. According to a Vedomosti source close to the Ministry of Defense, the aircraft had a significant - more than half of the assigned - flight resource reserve (the number of takeoffs, landings and flight hours) and a sufficient calendar resource reserve (the period during which operation is permissible). This modification has not been used in civilian airlines for a long time, but the military has a much lower flight time than commercial airlines, he explained.

The plane was not overloaded, and when taxiing to the runway before takeoff, there were no serious emergency situations, Kommersant writes, citing sources interviewed and fragments of the crew’s conversations with the dispatcher posted on the Internet. 2 minutes 44 seconds after takeoff, the controller informed the crew about an oncoming aircraft that was landing. The transport worker confirmed the receipt of the command, but after a few seconds did not answer the call of the oncoming side, the newspaper writes. After that, the Tu-154 was called on all frequencies, but he did not answer and his mark on the radar screens disappeared.

The pilot flying the Tu-154 said that during this time the crew had to turn off the headlights, retract the landing gear, and also the flaps - first half, up to 15 degrees, and when the speed reached 360 km / h - completely. In the first two minutes, the aircraft had to be transferred from takeoff to flight configuration and continue climbing 1200–1500 m. The interlocutor of the publication considers this stage of takeoff to be relatively calm. Military pilots interviewed by Kommersant do not rule out the possibility of a terrorist attack. But a senior newspaper source in law enforcement agencies explained that every Russian plane flying to Syria is being watched by NATO allies and militaries: “Even if we wanted to cover up a terrorist attack on board, it would have been recorded and immediately made public by our neighbors in the region.” . He added that the plane did not hit the water, but dived, going to the bottom relatively intact, which, according to him, also indicates the absence of external influence. Oil stains did not begin to appear on the surface of the water at the crash site until noon, and luggage and fragments of bodies and hulls began to emerge even later, he added, they were carried over a large area by the current.