When the crash happened that 154. “Unless - collective insanity. Maintenance check

The crash of the Tu-154 aircraft of the 223rd flight detachment of the Russian Defense Ministry was one of the biggest tragedies of the outgoing year. There were 92 people on board the ship, all of them died. In each such case, the appearance of different versions of what happened is inevitable. Lenta.ru tried to figure out what was happening.

NB: Everything said below about the causes of the aircraft accident is a presentation of versions that have not yet been officially confirmed. Before the publication of official conclusions on the results of the investigation into the causes of the disaster, none of these versions can be considered true.

Circumstances

The Tu-154B-2 aircraft, tail number RA-85572, manufactured in 1983 at the Kuibyshev Aviation Plant (now the Aviakor plant), was operated by the Ministry of Defense almost all the time - first as part of the 8th Special Purpose Aviation Division of the USSR Air Force, then - created in 1993 of the 223rd flight detachment.

As of the day of the disaster, the aircraft had about 11 percent of its flight resource with an average flying time of just over 200 hours per year, which is relatively small for passenger liners that are operated in civil aviation with an intensity of 1000 or more hours per year. The assigned resource of the board was 37,500 hours, or 16,000 landings, while it could be extended to 60,000 hours and 22,000 landings.

Tu-154B-2s have already been withdrawn from commercial operation due to non-compliance with accepted noise standards and high fuel consumption, but military vehicles still remain in service.

The aircraft operator - the 223rd Flight Detachment of the Ministry of Defense, a Russian state aviation enterprise - provides air transportation in the interests of state structures and performs irregular cargo and passenger transportation, as a rule, of personnel of the armed forces. The enterprise was organized on the basis of the 8th Special Purpose Aviation Division (8 adOSNAZ, 8 adon) of the Russian Air Force in Chkalovsky in accordance with the order of the President of the Russian Federation dated January 15, 1993 No. 37-rp "On ensuring the activities of the 223rd and 224th flight detachments of the Ministry of Defense of Russia" for air transportation in the interests of government agencies.

The plane took off from the Chkalovsky airfield near Moscow and was supposed to land for refueling in Mozdok, however, due to weather conditions, the refueling airfield was changed to Sochi. From Sochi, the liner took off at 05:25 and fell, according to reports, after spending two minutes in the air before the crash.

The flight's destination was the Russian Khmeimim air base in Syria. The plane of the artists of the military ensemble named after Alexandrov, journalists and the military personnel accompanying them. In addition, Elizaveta Glinka, known as Doctor Lisa, and the head of the Department of Culture of the Ministry of Defense Anton Gubankov were on board.

Versions

The main publicly discussed versions of what happened come down to three: a technical malfunction, a pilot error, and a terrorist act. The concomitant circumstance to the first two could have been the weather, but the available data on the actual weather conditions in Sochi at the time of the disaster suggest that they were quite acceptable:

Visibility is 10 kilometers or more. Cloudiness in several layers: the lower layer is 5-7 oktants (eighths), with a lower edge of 1000 meters, there is another layer above it, continuous with a lower edge of 2800 meters, temperature +5, dew point +1, pressure about 763 millimeters of mercury column. Runways are dry. East wind 5 meters per second. At sea - wave height up to 0.1 meters.

All three versions can neither be confirmed nor ruled out before the official conclusions of the commission of inquiry, however, one can try to “spread out on the table” the available information, at least in order to streamline it.

The last time the RA-85572 board was repaired was in December 2014, and in September 2016 it underwent scheduled maintenance. The total flight time of the aircraft for 33 years of operation amounted to 6689 hours.

This age and resource is completely normal for liners in military operation. Thus, one of the main cargo-passenger aircraft of the US Air Force C-135 Stratolifter, built from 1956 to 1965, is still in operation, and the total service life of these aircraft may approach a century - they will remain in the Air Force until at least 2040 -s.

By itself, the Tu-154 is a reliable aircraft, however, no aircraft is immune from technical failures, and, of course, this version will be one of the main ones.

The crew of the crashed liner is characterized as experienced. The Tu-154 aircraft that crashed in the Black Sea was piloted by first-class pilot Roman Volkov.

“The Tu-154 aircraft of the military transport aviation of the Russian Ministry of Defense was flown by an experienced pilot Roman Alexandrovich Volkov. Roman Volkov is a first class pilot. The total flight time is more than three thousand hours, ”the military department told a TASS correspondent.

Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Petukhov - navigator of the crashed Tu-154B-2 - in April 2011 participated in the rescue of "". Then the plane of the same model landed at Chkalovsky airport with a faulty control system. The Tu-154B-2 RA-88563 board was planned to be transferred to Samara for repairs. After the plane took off, malfunctions were discovered in the operation of its control system. The plane began to sway in the air and bounce, which was noticeable from the ground. Journalists later called the liner dancing.

Nevertheless, the plane managed to return to the runway in Chkalovsky thanks to the skillful actions of the crew. Petukhov was the navigator of the "dancing liner", along with his colleagues, he was awarded the Order of Courage.

At the same time, taking off from coastal airfields has always been not the easiest procedure, and the Tu-154, especially in version "B", is described by many pilots as a rather strict aircraft in control, making high demands on the pilot, which also does not allow to dismiss the version on the move. possible tragic mistake. According to civil aviation pilots, an experience of more than three thousand hours is not enough for the commander of a machine of this class.

Finally, given the political situation, the version of a terrorist attack cannot be ruled out, including due to the specifics of the organization of military flights. Unfortunately, the rigor of screening and security on military passenger flights is much less than on commercial airlines. As noted by many military personnel and civilians who have experience flying with Ministry of Defense aircraft from Chkalovsky and other military airfields, pre-flight screening on such flights often comes down to a mere formality in the form of checking passenger lists with documents, especially when “our” team is flying. When flying abroad - to the same Syria - it is somewhat stricter (border formalities are included), but even in this case it cannot be compared with traditional measures at most civil airports in developed countries.

Under these conditions, it is possible to admit the presence of an explosive device on board, which could be placed in the luggage of the liner during loading or carried on board during an intermediate landing in Sochi. In any case, the likelihood of such a development of events is not ruled out by the special services, which began checking those who could have access to the aircraft at the airport of departure and in Sochi.

A variation of the version of the attack is the assumption put forward in some media about an attack on an aircraft using a portable anti-aircraft missile system, which could have been carried out by terrorists either from a boat or from a residential area on the coast, but this option is hardly possible, given that the deceased liner should have been land in Mozdok, and if they intended to attack him during landing / take-off from the refueling airfield, they would have been waiting for him there.

Anyway, the investigation has just begun. A plane crash into the sea can seriously complicate it - a steep drop in depths in the Sochi region, where the continental slope at an angle of 45 degrees sharply goes down, by 500, 1000 or more meters, and a thick layer of silt will greatly complicate the search for the wreckage of the liner. The Il-18V aircraft that died in the same area in 1972 fell a little further from the coast - at a distance of about 10 kilometers, but its wreckage went to a depth of 500 to 1000 meters, and neither large parts of the fuselage and wings, nor flight recorders could be found .

Given these conditions, every hour matters: with every hour, the wreckage that has gone under water will sink deeper and deeper. This, obviously, is understood by all responsible persons - the diving elite of the Ministry of Emergency Situations and the Russian Navy are being transferred to Sochi - deep-sea divers from all four fleets, with special equipment and underwater vehicles.

Deciphering the black boxes of the Tu-154 aircraft that crashed near Sochi showed that the cause of the accident was the error of the co-pilot and overload.

The reasons that led to: the error of the co-pilot, who mixed up the control levers, as well as overload, became known.

After a complete decoding of the black boxes of the Tu-154 crashed at the end of December 2016 in the waters of Sochi - parametric and speech - the experts of the Ministry of Defense can in fact accurately name the causes of the crash.

According to experts, the plane with passengers was ruined by a combination of several factors: the board went on its last flight overloaded, and co-pilot Alexander Rovensky on takeoff mixed up the landing gear and flaps control levers. When the crew noticed the mistake, it was already too late: the heavy Tu-154 simply did not have enough height for a saving maneuver, so it hit the water with the tail section of the fuselage and collapsed.

The human factor is recognized as a priority version of the Tu-154 crash.

"Studied by the experts of the Research Center for the Operation and Repair of Aircraft of the Ministry of Defense in Lyubertsy, the data of speech and parametric (fixing the operation of all aircraft units) recorders say that in the third minute of the flight, when the liner was at an altitude of 450 meters above sea level, the sensors of the directional stability system worked The car began to lose altitude sharply due to problems with the flaps, "Life.ru quotes a source related to the study of the causes of the disaster.

According to experts, this happened after the co-pilot, 33-year-old captain Alexander Rovensky, instead of retracting the landing gear, retracted the flaps.

“From this, the plane went into an outrageous angle of attack, the crew tried to turn the car around to reach the ground, but they didn’t have time to do this,” the source added.

As it turned out, the situation was aggravated by the overload of the Tu-154. In the luggage compartment, everything was filled to capacity. The tail of the aircraft pulled down. It was impossible to save the car: there was not enough speed and height. The tail section of the first touched the water, and then the Tu-154 hit the sea with its right wing at high speed and collapsed.

The emergency situation was a complete surprise for the crew: in the first seconds, the aircraft commander, 35-year-old Major Roman Volkov, and co-pilot Alexander Rovensky were confused, but quickly pulled themselves together and tried to save the plane until the last seconds.

From the words of the co-pilot and the commander of the ship, it becomes clear that something happened to the flaps, after which an alarm sounded due to the maximum angle of attack of the Tu-154.

Black box decryption:

Speed 300... (Unintelligible.)
- (Unintelligible.)
- Took the racks, commander.
- (Unintelligible.)
- Wow, my!
(Sharp beep sounds.)
- Flaps, bitch, what the fuck!
- Altimeter!
- We ... (inaudible.)
(Ground proximity warning sounds.)
- (Unintelligible.)
- Commander, we're falling!

So the experts realized that the aircraft had problems with the flaps precisely through the fault of the crew.

The pilots who flew the Tu-154 confirm the conclusions of experts from the Ministry of Defense that the cause of the disaster could be pilot error.

"At Tupolev, the landing gear and flaps retract handles are made on the canopy of the cockpit, between them, above the windshield. You can confuse them, especially if the co-pilot, sitting on the right, whose duties include controlling the flaps and landing gear during takeoff, is tired. From After that, the aircraft went into an extreme angle of attack, hit the water, and its tail section fell off," said Viktor Sazhenin, Honored Pilot of the Russian Federation, who himself flew the Tu-154 for eight years.

This version is also considered acceptable by test pilot Hero of Russia Magomed Tolboev.

"On the control panel of the Tu-154, the flaps and landing gear toggle switches are located above the windshield. The flaps are on the left, the landing gear is on the right. The co-pilot, who sits in the seat on the right, is responsible for them. It is possible that the pilot could mix up the levers or be distracted by something , so the plane took off with the landing gear extended and the flaps retracted," Tolboev said.

According to Tolboev, one cannot exclude such a version that after takeoff the crew exceeded the speed and the flap mechanism collapsed, due to which the liner fell to the right, lost speed and crashed into the water.

Another factor in the Tu-154 disaster in Sochi could be the lack of sufficient knowledge on how to act in an emergency situation from the commander of the ship and the co-pilot.

“Most likely, neither the commander of the aircraft, Roman Volkov, nor the co-pilot Alexander Rovensky, who graduated from military schools in the early 2000s, underwent special flight training,” says a source in the commission investigating the crash in Sochi.

According to him, if the pilots had undergone special training for piloting in extreme situations at the Lipetsk Aviation Center for the Retraining of Military Pilots or at the Gromov Flight Research Institute, then perhaps the disaster could have been avoided.

“In the military schools that the pilots graduated from, they were hardly taught how, in the event of a failure of the flaps at low altitudes, set them to reverse release in order to bring the liner out of the prohibitive angle of attack,” the expert explained.

In addition, the engineers of the Scientific Research Center for the Operation and Repair of Aircraft of the Ministry of Defense in Lyubertsy do not exclude that when the crew tried to turn the car around to reach the ground, it had a good chance of salvation, if not for the overload.

“Overload is evidenced by the fact that when the plane began to lose altitude, it was the tail section that hit the water first, which fell off, and then the car’s right wing caught the water and crashed into the sea,” said a source in the Ministry of Transport of the Russian Federation.

According to him, it cannot be ruled out that the luggage compartment was simply overloaded.

“After all, this was almost the last flight of a civilian aircraft to Syria, and relatives and colleagues of the military on a business trip could beg the airfield management and the crew to take on board too much. And during the flight and after landing in Sochi, the cargo could shake. During takeoff from Sochi, the cargo moved to the tail section of the liner, and the car was pulled down in an emergency situation with flaps," the expert says.

The accident with the Tu-154 B-2 with tail number RA-85572 of the Ministry of Defense occurred on December 25, 2016. It was at 5:40 am Moscow time, 1.7 kilometers from the coast of Sochi. The aircraft of the Ministry of Defense flew to the Syrian Khmeimim from the Chkalovsky airfield, and in Sochi it was only refueling. There were 92 people on board the ship. A few minutes after taking off from the runway, the plane disappeared from the radar screens.

The crashed airliner was based at the Chkalovsky airfield near Moscow and was part of the Federal State Budgetary Institution "State Airline" 223rd Flight Detachment "of the Ministry of Defense, which transports military personnel.

The Tu-154 B-2 modification is designed to carry 180 economy class passengers and was produced from 1978 to 1986. A total of 382 aircraft were built. Since 2012, Russian civil airlines have not operated the Tu-154 B-2.

The media again returned to the death of the Tu-154 near Sochi, the military aircraft in which the Alexandrov Ensemble died - as they say, the cultural symbol of the Russian army, and Elizabeth Glinka- Dr. Lisa, Mother Teresa of our Northern Spaces. And several more teams of journalists died, a total of 92 people.

The Tu-154 flew from Moscow, from the Chkalovsky military airfield to Syria, to Damascus to raise the morale of the personnel of the Russian Aerospace Forces at the Khmeimim air base on the eve of the New Year.

The flight was like a flight, the crew under the command of the pilot Volkova I have flown this route many times. At the Chkalovsky military airfield, near Moscow, it is known that this is a military airfield, the mouse, it would seem, will not slip through, everyone boarded. The plane flew to Damascus over the Caspian Sea, then had to refuel in Mozdok, fly over Iran, Iraq and through all of Syria to Damascus.

But this time Mozdok was closed and the board flew to refuel in Adler over the Caucasus, from the Caspian to the Black Sea. For an airplane, it’s like for a car to go to refuel at the nearest gas station, well, let’s refuel at another, by the standards of air transport, it’s within easy reach.

In Adler, the plane refueled, and supposedly no one got off and boarded the plane in Adler. They took off, and after a couple of minutes they disappeared from the radar. And then they found the wreckage of the Tu-154 in the Black Sea.

The newspapers wrote about all this in detail immediately after December 25. And about Tu already seems to be forgotten. And suddenly, just before the murder in Kyiv Voronenkov, and before the bulk riots in Moscow, suddenly again, look, a new portion of supposedly information about the death of the Tu-154.

More precisely, this is not new information, but an interpretation of some of the information that we already had.

Apparently, somewhere in the high spheres of management of our mental health, they decided that the version of the pilot's error, which we have been carefully sticking out all these months, looks unconvincing and now they add interpretations.

I remembered the main claims to the pilots.

They (in fact, we are talking about one, the main pilot - the flight commander Volkov) are accused of things hitherto unheard of in the investigation of the death of aircraft, namely:

- loss of orientation in space;

- in the illusory perception of reality;

The flight was at night and therefore difficult.

Say, the commander of the Volkov ship (now they began to say that the 4 thousand hours he had flown were not enough to call him an experienced pilot, and earlier they said that Volkov was experienced), mistook the stars reflected in the sea for the stars in the sky and behaved accordingly, began to decline, instead of taking off.

Against such defamation of their dead comrade, fellow pilots were indignant. Some significant part of them.

They said that night flying is a common thing and half of the flights are night, nothing extraordinary.

That in a night flight the commander of the ship “looks only at the instruments”, because what kind of stars are there! That the Tu-154 has a large flight team, that several crew members continuously report to the commander both the altitude and everything that is needed.

True, among fellow pilots there were those who actually blamed the pilot for the death of Tu, one “comrade” said so, I already quoted him that 4 thousand flown flights are not enough, he romantically said that “only after 10 thousand flown flights the pilot begins to feel bird."

Returning to the wording given in the media, in particular, to these “loss of orientation in space” and to “illusory perception of reality”, I said to myself: let me, but these are symptoms of what happens to a pilot during an electronic attack.

The version of an electronic attack was once dismissed by the investigation.

But she was. And supporters of this version referred to interesting data.

On the eve of the tragedy, it turns out that the French reconnaissance ship Dupuy de Lome entered the Black Sea, which can cut down all the electronics of the aircraft with a radio pulse.

The authors of the version claimed that an electronic attack on the Tu-154 could have been launched from this ship. Russia also has means of electronic jamming, argued supporters of the version, they say, nothing fantastic, but the aircraft was military, so those who carried out the attack might not feel like bloodsuckers and murderers.

The status of the flight was the highest that exists (a military ensemble, even a conductor, a lieutenant general, a flight to Syria, and similar international political importance).

The nature of the wreckage and the nature of the injuries inflicted on the bodies (divers claimed that they were finely-finely chopped into gruel), as well as the scattering of debris over a long distance, indicate an explosion on board. If the plane had broken into the water, the wreckage would have been large. And the bodies would not have been finely chopped.

And finally, even the fact that in the morning all civilian ships were forbidden to go to sea in that area, and another fact: the National Guard was posted at the coastline, they say that they are hiding from us the true cause of Tu's death.

And now the second portion of misinformation. Apparently, they decided at the top that you and I may still have doubts about the veracity of the accusations of the pilots in everything.

Therefore, they are additionally blamed on them. A well-known technique in the criminal world - murders are always hung on dead comrades.

Now about the airfield in Chkalovsky.

Pilot Krasnoperov: “I flew from Chkalovsky to the east. And there was no screening, with security much worse than at civilian airports.

Writer Limonov: “And I flew from Chkalovsky ... There was no inspection, they didn’t look at passports, they didn’t check luggage. Well, I’m a well-known person, but there were three guards with me, and they didn’t demand their passports, nor did they check their luggage. ”

The experts of the Ministry of Defense concluded that the plane crashed over the Black Sea due to a possible error of the co-pilot, who mixed up the control levers, as well as low altitude and overload.

After a complete decoding of the black boxes that crashed at the end of December 2016 in the waters of Sochi Tu-154 - parametric and speech- Experts of the Ministry of Defense can actually name the reasons for the crash.According to experts, the plane with passengers was ruined by a combination of several factors:went on the last flight overloaded, and the co-pilot Alexander Rovensky takeoff, maybemixed up the landing gear and flaps control levers. When the crew noticed the mistake, it was already too late: the heavy Tu-154 simply did not have enough height for a rescue maneuver, so hehit the water with the tail section of the fuselage and collapsed.

Heavy and unmanageable

Life's source, familiar with the investigation into the causes of the disaster, said that the notorious human factor was recognized as a priority version of the Tu-154 crash.

Studied by the experts of the Research Center for the Operation and Repair of Aviation Equipment of the Ministry of Defense in Lyubertsy, the data of speech and parametric (fixing the work of all aircraft units) recorders say that in the third minute of the flight, when the liner was at an altitude of 450 meters above sea level, the sensors of the directional stability system worked, - told Life source. - The car began to lose altitude sharply due to problems with the flaps.

According to experts, this could happen after the co-pilot, 33-year-old captain Alexander Rovensky, instead of retracting the landing gear, retracted the flaps.

From this, the plane went into an exorbitant angle of attack, the crew tried to turn the car around to reach the ground, but they didn’t have time to do this, ”the source of Life added.

As it turned out, the situation was aggravated by the overload of the Tu-154. In the luggage compartment, everything was filled to capacity. The tail of the aircraft pulled down. It was impossible to save the car: there was not enough speed and height.The tail of the first touched the water, and then the Tu-154at high speedhit the sea with the right wing and collapsed.

According to Life's source, the emergency situation was a complete surprise for the crew: in the first seconds, the aircraft commander, 35-year-old Major Roman Volkov, and co-pilot Alexander Rovensky were confused, but quickly pulled themselves together and tried to save the plane until the last seconds.

DECRYPTION:

Speed 300... (Unintelligible.)

- (Unintelligible.)

Got the racks, Commander.

- (Unintelligible.)

Ooh, my!

(Sharp beep sounds.)

Flaps, bitch, what the fuck!

Altimeter!

Us... (Unintelligible.)

(Ground proximity warning sounds.)

- (Unintelligible.)

Commander, we're falling!

So the experts realized that the aircraft had problems with the flaps precisely through the fault of the crew.

The pilots who flew the Tu-154, with whom Life spoke, confirm the conclusions of experts from the Ministry of Defense that pilot error could be the cause of the disaster.

At "Tupolev" handles for retracting the landing gear and flaps are made on the canopy of the cockpit, between them, above the windshield. You can mix them up, especially if the co-pilot, sitting on the right, whose duties include controlling the flaps and landing gear during takeoff, is tired, ”Viktor Sazhenin, Honored Pilot of the Russian Federation, who himself flew the Tu-154 for eight years, told Life. - From this, the plane went into a prohibitive angle of attack, hit the water, and its tail section fell off.

This version is also considered acceptable by test pilot Hero of Russia Magomed Tolboev.

On the Tu-154 control panel, the flap and landing gear toggle switches are located above the windshield. Flaps - on the left, landing gear - on the right. The co-pilot, who sits in the seat on the right, is responsible for them. It is possible that the pilot could mix up the levers or be distracted by something, so the plane took off with the landing gear extended and the flaps retracted, Tolboev told Life.

tragic experience

Another factor in the Tu-154 disaster in Sochi could be the lack of sufficient knowledge on how to act in an emergency situation from the commander of the ship and the co-pilot.

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The accident with the Tu-154 B-2 with tail number RA-85572 of the Ministry of Defense occurred on December 25, 2016. It was at 5:40 am Moscow time, 1.7 kilometers from the coast of Sochi. The aircraft of the Ministry of Defense flew to the Syrian Khmeimim from the Chkalovsky airfield, and in Sochi it was only refueling. There were 92 people on board the ship. A few minutes after taking off from the runway, the plane disappeared from the radar screens.

The crashed airliner was based at the Chkalovsky airfield near Moscow and was part of the Federal State Budgetary Institution "State Airline 223rd Flight Detachment" of the Ministry of Defense, which transports military personnel.