The latest version of the Tu 154 plane crash

At 5.27 Moscow time after takeoff from the Sochi airfield, located in the city district of Adler. The plane was performing a scheduled flight on the route Moscow - Khmeimim (Latakia, Syrian Arab Republic).

Artists of the Academic Twice Red Banner Song and Dance Ensemble of the Russian Army named after A.V. Alexandrova in front Russian soldiers and officers. Among the dead were the artistic director of the group, People's Artist of Russia, Lieutenant General Valery Khalilov, deputy head of the ensemble Andrei Sonnikov, chief choirmaster Konstantin Mayorov, and five soloists. In total, the ensemble lost almost half of its creative staff.

The plane, flying from the Chkalovsky airfield near Moscow to the Syrian Khmeimim airfield, was supposed to refuel in Mozdok. However, due to bad weather, the Tu-154 was sent to Sochi. Upon arrival at Adler airport, the plane was taken under guard by employees Border Service FSB of Russia and military personnel of the Russian Ministry of Defense.

An employee of the coast guard of the FSB border troops, who witnessed the crash of the Tu-154, said that before the disaster he had “an unnaturally raised nose.” The border guard was on a boat in the Black Sea. According to him, the plane, instead of gaining altitude, began to quickly descend towards the surface of the sea, as if about to land, and the next moment it touched the surface of the water with its tail, which fell off upon impact.

The maximum altitude to which the plane rose was about 250 meters, and the speed was within 360-370 kilometers per hour.

To eliminate the consequences of the aviation accident, the work of operational headquarters and operational groups of the Southern Regional Center and the Main Directorate of the Russian Ministry of Emergency Situations for the Krasnodar Territory was organized. In cooperation with the relevant structures of the Russian Ministry of Defense, Rosaviation, Rosmorrechflot, Border Directorate of the FSB of Russia, Ministry of Health of Russia, Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia, Investigative Committee of Russia and government bodies Krasnodar region search and rescue operations were organized. They were carried out by forces totaling about 3.6 thousand people, more than 500 pieces of equipment, 45 watercraft, 15 aircraft, 16 helicopters and 20 unmanned aerial vehicles were used. aircraft. Search work was carried out using modern underwater robotic systems. Psychological support was provided and medical care families of the victims.

December 26, 2016 was declared a day of mourning in Russian Federation in connection with the plane crash of the Tu-154 plane near Sochi.

In the area of ​​the search operation at a distance of 1700 meters from coastline along the take-off axis of the aircraft by divers at the bottom of the Black Sea. Using acoustic means, the radius of their dispersion was determined in this place, which was about 500 meters.

The main phase of the search and rescue operation at the crash site. Rescuers brought to the surface all the main fragments of the crashed plane.

Complete search work in the Black Sea at the Tu-154 crash site.

More than half of the victims of the Tu-154 plane crash over the Black Sea in the Moscow region. After the funeral was completed, a memorial stone was placed at the burial sites of the victims.

On the fact of the Tu-154 crash, the military investigative department of the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation for the Sochi garrison on the grounds of a crime under Article 351 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (violation of flight rules resulting in grave consequences). Head of the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation Alexander Bastrykin. On his instructions, a criminal case was opened for further investigation.

Issues related to establishing the causes of the disaster. In addition to the military, it includes representatives of the Ministry of Transport, the Interstate Aviation Committee, the Ministry of Industry and Trade and the Tupolev aviation concern.

Specialists and the laboratory and research base of the scientific and technical center of the Interstate Aviation Committee are also involved in the investigation of the disaster.

At the beginning of the investigation into the accident, the commission accepted more than 15 versions of the incident. The FSB called the main versions: foreign objects getting into the engine, low-quality fuel, pilot error and technical malfunction. Signs and facts indicating the possibility of committing a terrorist act or sabotage on board an aircraft. Flight recorders raised from the water made it possible to reduce the number of versions of what happened by half.

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.

The crash of the Tu-154 aircraft of the 223rd flight detachment of the Russian Ministry of Defense became one of the biggest tragedies of the past year. There were 92 people on board the liner, all of them died. In each such case, the emergence 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 plane crash is a presentation of versions that have not yet been officially confirmed. Until the publication of official conclusions about 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, produced in 1983 at the Kuibyshev Aviation Plant (now the Aviakor plant), was operated almost all the time by the Ministry of Defense - first as part of the 8th Special Purpose Air Division of the USSR Air Force, then created in 1993 of the 223rd flying detachment.

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

Tu-154B-2 has currently been taken out of commercial service due to non-compliance with accepted noise standards and high fuel consumption, but military vehicles still remain in service.

The aircraft operator is the 223rd flight detachment of the Ministry of Defense, Russian state aviation enterprise- provides air transportation in the interests of government agencies and carries out irregular cargo and passenger transportation, as a rule, 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 supporting the activities of the 223rd and 224th flight detachments of the Russian Ministry of Defense" for air transport 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, but due to weather conditions the refueling airfield was changed to Sochi. The airliner took off from Sochi at 05:25 and fell, according to available data, spending two minutes in the air before the crash.

The flight's destination was the Russian Khmeimim airbase in Syria. The plane of the artists of the Alexandrov military ensemble, 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: equipment malfunction, piloting error, terrorist attack. A concomitant factor to the first two could be the weather, but the available data on the actual weather conditions in Sochi at the time of the disaster indicate that they were quite acceptable:

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

All three versions can neither be confirmed nor excluded before the official conclusions of the investigation commission, but you can try to “lay out on the table” the available information, at least in order to organize it.

The last time the RA-85572 aircraft was repaired was in December 2014, and in September 2016 it underwent scheduled maintenance. The aircraft's total flight time over 33 years of operation was 6,689 hours.

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

The Tu-154 itself is a reliable aircraft, however, no aircraft are insured against technical problems, and, of course, this version will be one of the main ones.

The crew of the crashed airliner is described as experienced. The Tu-154 plane that crashed in the Black Sea was flown by first class pilot Roman Volkov.

"Tu-154 aircraft military transport aviation The Russian Ministry of Defense was controlled by an experienced pilot, Roman Aleksandrovich 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, the navigator of the crashed Tu-154B-2, took part in the rescue of "" in April 2011. Then a plane of the same model landed at Chkalovsky airport with a faulty control system. The Tu-154B-2 RA-88563 was planned to be transported to Samara for repairs. After the plane took off, problems were discovered in 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 was returned 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 the “B” version, is described by many pilots as a fairly strict aircraft to fly, placing high demands on the pilot, which also does not allow one to dismiss the version out of hand possible tragic mistake. According to civil aviation pilots, a little over three thousand hours of experience for the commander of a machine of this class is insufficient.

Finally, considering political situation, one cannot exclude the possibility of a terrorist attack, including due to the specific features of the organization of military flights. Unfortunately, the strictness of vetting and security on the military passenger flights much less than commercial airlines. As noted by many military personnel and civilians who have experience flying Ministry of Defense aircraft from Chkalovsky and other military airfields, pre-flight inspection on such flights it often comes down to an empty formality in the form of checking passenger lists with documents, especially when “your” team is flying. When flying abroad - to Syria, for example - it is somewhat stricter (border formalities are included), but even in this case it does not compare with traditional measures at most civil airports in developed countries.

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

A variation of the version of the terrorist attack is the assumption put forward in some media about an attack on the plane using a man-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 crashed airliner was supposed to land in Mozdok, and if they intended to attack him during landing/takeoff from the refueling airfield, they would have been waiting for him there.

One way or another, the investigation has just begun. A plane crashing into the sea can seriously complicate it - a steep drop in depth in the Sochi area, where the continental slope at an angle of 45 degrees drops sharply downwards, 500, 1000 or more meters, and a thick layer of silt will greatly complicate the search for the wreckage of the airliner. The Il-18V aircraft that crashed in the same area in 1972 fell a little further from the coast - at a distance of about 10 kilometers, but its debris went to a depth of 500 to 1000 meters, and no large parts the fuselage and wings, nor the flight recorders could be found.

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

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, cultural symbol Russian army, and Elizaveta Glinka- Doctor Lisa, Mother Teresa of our Northern spaces. And several more teams of journalists died, for a total of 92 people.

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

The flight was like a flight, the crew was under the command of the pilot Volkova I have flown this route more than once. At the Chkalovsky military airfield, near Moscow, it is known - this is a military airfield, a mouse, it would seem, would not slip through, everyone boarded. The plane was heading 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 plane flew for refueling to Adler above 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 air transport- just a stone's throw away.

In Adler, the plane refueled, and allegedly no one got off or boarded the plane in Adler. They took off and disappeared from radar within a couple of minutes. 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 25th. And they seem to have started to forget about Tu. And suddenly just before the murder in Kyiv Voronenkova, and before the massive riots in Moscow, suddenly again, look, a new piece of supposed information about the death of the Tu-154.

More precisely, it's not new information, but an interpretation of some of the information we already had.

Apparently, somewhere in the high spheres of those managing our mental health, they decided that the version of the pilot’s error, which they carefully pushed to us all these months, looks unconvincing and so they add interpretations.

I remember the main complaints about the pilots.

They (in essence, we are talking about one, the main pilot - the commander of the board Volkov) are accused of things hitherto unheard of in investigations of aircraft deaths, namely:

- loss of orientation in space;

- in an illusory perception of reality;

— the flight was at night and therefore difficult.

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

Fellow pilots were indignant against such defamation of their deceased comrade. Still some significant part of them.

They reported that night flight- a common thing and half of the flights are at night, nothing extraordinary.

That in a night flight the ship’s commander “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 and 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 have already quoted him, that 4 thousand flights flown are not enough, he romantically said that “only after 10 thousand flown flights does the pilot begin to feel bird."

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

The version of an electronic attack was at one time 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 disable all the aircraft’s electronics 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, supporters of the version argued, saying that it was nothing fantastic, and the plane 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 debris and the nature of the injuries inflicted on the bodies (the divers claimed that they were finely chopped into a pulp), as well as the scattering of the debris over a long distance, indicate an explosion on board. If the plane had broken up on the water, the debris would have been large. And the bodies would not have been chopped into small pieces.

And finally, even the fact that the next morning all civilian ships were prohibited from going to sea in that area, and another fact: the National Guard was posted at the coastal edge, speak for the fact that they are hiding the true cause of Tu’s death from us.

And now comes the second piece of misinformation. Apparently, those at the top decided that you and I might still have doubts about the veracity of the accusations against the pilots.

That’s why they’re putting additional pressure on them. A well-known technique in the criminal world is that murders are always blamed on dead comrades.

Now about the airfield in Chkalovsky.

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

Writer Limonov: “And I flew from Chkalovsky... There was no inspection, no passports were looked at, no luggage was checked. Okay, I famous person, but there were three guards with me, and they didn’t ask for their passports or inspect their luggage.”

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

Heavy and unmanageable

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

Data from speech and parametric (recording the operation of all aircraft components) recorders studied by experts from the Research Center for Operation and Repair of Aircraft of the Ministry of Defense in Lyubertsy say that in the third minute of the flight, when the airliner was at an altitude of 450 meters above sea level, the directional stability system sensors were activated, - a source told Life. - The car began to sharply lose altitude due to problems with the flaps.

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

Because of this, the plane went into an extreme angle of attack, the crew tried to turn the car to reach the ground, but did not have time to do this, the Life source added.

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

According to Life’s source, the emergency situation came as a complete surprise to the crew: in the first seconds, the plane’s 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.

DECODING:

Speed ​​300... (Unintelligible.)

- (Unintelligible.)

I took the racks, commander.

- (Unintelligible.)

Wow, oh my!

(A sharp signal sounds.)

Flaps, bitch, what the fuck!

Altimeter!

Us... (Unintelligible.)

(A signal sounds about a dangerous approach to the ground.)

- (Unintelligible.)

Commander, we are falling!

This is how the experts realized that the plane had problems with the flaps due to 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 the cause of the disaster could have been pilot error.

On the Tupolev, the landing gear and flap retraction handles are located on the visor of the pilot's cabin, between them, above the windshield. You can confuse them, especially if the co-pilot sitting on the right, whose responsibilities include controlling the flaps and landing gear during takeoff, is tired,” Honored Pilot of the Russian Federation Viktor Sazhenin, who himself flew on the Tu-154 for eight years, told Life. - Because of this, the plane went into an extreme 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. 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 have mixed up the levers or been distracted by something, so the plane took off with the landing gear extended and the flaps retracted,” Tolboev told Life.

According to Tolboev, one cannot exclude the possibility that after takeoff the crew exceeded the speed and the flap mechanism collapsed, causing the plane to fall to the right, lose speed and crash into the water.

Tragic experience

Another factor in the Tu-154 disaster in Sochi could have been the lack of sufficient knowledge among the ship’s commander and co-pilot on how to act in an extreme situation.

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The crash 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 Ministry of Defense plane was flying to Syrian Khmeimim from the Chkalovsky airfield, and in Sochi it was just refueling. There were 92 people on board the liner. A few minutes after lifting off from the runway, the plane disappeared from radar screens.

The crashed airliner was based at the Chkalovsky airfield near Moscow and was part of the Federal State Budgetary Institution State Airlines 223rd flight squad"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.

Daria Kobylkina, Elena Kostyuchenko

The crash of the Tu-154, which occurred on December 25, became the most terrible plane crash last year. And the most secret of all recent years. Almost four months later, we are forced to admit that the public has virtually no reliable information about what happened. The Ministry of Defense completely took over the investigation of the disaster, although the flight took place from civil airport And among the dead there are not only military personnel. Air crash investigations are never quick, but in the three and a half months since the crash, we have received much more information, including about such high-profile cases as the crash Russian airliner over Sinai as a result of a terrorist attack and even the destruction of a Malaysian Boeing over Donbass.

Instead of objective data, the public is offered versions that are published by the media with reference to sources close to the investigation. Since it is impossible to verify them now, these versions can be used to trace the position of the military investigation, formulated specifically for “external use” - that is, for us.

It is known that on December 25, 2016, a Tu-154B-2 airliner belonging to the Russian Air Force was flying on the Moscow-Latakia route. The plane took off from Moscow at 1.38 am on December 25 from the Chkalovsky military airfield, delayed for several hours. The plane was supposed to refuel in Mozdok, but due to bad conditions weather conditions was sent to Sochi. We refueled and border guards came on board to check for foreign passports. At 5.25 the plane took off from Sochi airport and disappeared from radar at 5.27. There was no distress signal. Subsequently, the Ministry of Defense will announce that the plane crashed into the Black Sea 70 seconds after takeoff from Sochi airport.

All 92 people on board died - 84 passengers and 8 crew members. Among them are artists of the Alexandrov Choir, journalists from NTV, Channel One, the Zvezda TV channel, and the head of the Fair Aid Foundation, Elizaveta Glinka (Doctor Lisa). The Russian FSB officially reported that “according to the Ministry of Defense, there were 84 passengers and eight crew members, passenger luggage and 150 kg of cargo (food and medicine) on board the plane.” “The said aircraft did not transport military or dual-use cargo or pyrotechnics,” the FSB Central Operations Center said.

In the first hours after the disaster, the military investigative department of the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation for the Sochi garrison opened a criminal case under Article 351 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (“Violation of flight rules that resulted in grave consequences”). Later, the case was transferred to the central office of the Investigative Committee of Russia. The FSB is providing operational support for the investigation. Despite the fact that the case is officially being handled by the Russian Investigative Committee, in fact, the Russian Ministry of Defense commission headed by Deputy Minister of Defense General of the Army Pavel Popov is in charge of establishing the causes of the military aircraft crash. I can say that the search for bodies and fragments of the plane, carried out by the forces of the Ministry of Emergency Situations, also took place under the close control of the Ministry of Defense - as well as work with the relatives of the victims. The technical part of the investigation and analysis of the wreckage is being carried out by employees of the Research Center for the Operation and Repair of Aircraft Equipment of the Ministry of Defense. Civilian specialists, including employees of the Interstate Aviation Committee (IAC), which investigates all plane crashes in the world, were involved in a limited and forced manner - at the end of January there were reports that the investigation encountered difficulties in deciphering and analyzing data from flight recorders. This is due to the fact that the crashed Tu-154 was equipped with recorders that looked like a reel-to-reel tape recorder, and the Ministry of Defense does not have the appropriate specialists to decipher them. IAC stated that one of the specialists is taking part in the investigation, but IAC does not have the right to comment on the Tu-154 crash. The RF IC also does not have the right to comment on the progress of the investigation and does not have operational information on the case.

In such conditions, it is difficult to guarantee the reliability and impartiality of the investigation’s conclusions. We ask readers to take a critical look at the facts presented in the material.

As Lieutenant General Sergei Baynetov, a member of the state commission and head of the aviation safety service of the Armed Forces, reported at the end of December, initially there were more than 15 versions of the Tu-154 crash, then their number was halved.

What was excluded?

Just four hours after the disaster (the search for debris and bodies had just begun), Chairman of the Federation Council Committee on Defense and Security Viktor Ozerov publicly ruled out a terrorist attack: “I completely rule out the version of a terrorist attack. Aircraft of the Ministry of Defense, airspace Russia, there cannot be such a version here.” However, the investigation continued to consider the possibility of a terrorist attack, sabotage, and even a missile hit until mid-January 2017. Now, according to Novaya, the possibility of an explosion or any external influence on the plane is absolutely excluded.

Already in the first hours after the disaster, the possibility of low-quality fuel was practically ruled out - at the same time as the crashed plane, other planes were also refueling at the airport aircraft, which took off and arrived without any problems. Airport employees told Novaya that control over fuel here is “strong”: “Our president refuels here, you understand.” At the same time, the FSB, which provided operational support for the investigation, considered the possibility of foreign objects getting into the engine.

A serious technical malfunction of the aircraft - failure of one or more engines - has also now been ruled out.

Overload was also cited as a possible cause of problems with climb. The fact of overload is denied by the Ministry of Defense.

Priority versions

From the first day of the disaster, two priority versions were identified - a technical malfunction and a pilot error.

On December 27, almost simultaneously, information appeared about the decoding of the “black boxes” - speech and parametric. Life published the crew's conversations.

...Speed ​​300... (Unintelligible.)

- (Inaudible.)

— I took the racks, commander.

- (Inaudible.)

- Wow, oh my!

(A sharp signal sounds.)

- Flaps, bitch, what the f***!

- Altimeter!

- We... (Inaudible.)

(A signal sounds about dangerous proximity to the ground.)

- (Inaudible.)

- Commander, we are falling!

At the same time, according to information provided to Novaya Gazeta by the Emergency Situations Ministry employees who led and carried out the search, at the time of publication of the transcript, the voice recorder had not been recovered from the sea. The decryption never received official confirmation. On December 29, the head of the Aviation Flight Safety Service of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, Lieutenant General Sergei Baynetov, said that, judging by radio traffic data, there was a “special situation” on board for 10 seconds - without further clarification.

According to the Life source, the second recorder, parametric, has not yet been delivered to the Central Research Institute Air Force, and when its decryption will begin is still unknown.

On the same day, information appeared in Kommersant that the raised and deciphered parametric recorder registered a failure to retract the flaps - that is, technical malfunction. A source close to the investigation develops a version: the pilots tried to compensate for the diving moment that appeared when the flaps were not retracted with the steering wheel and passed a supercritical angle of attack, after which the air stopped holding the plane - and the fall became inevitable.

The assumption that the flaps did not work was put forward even before the recorder was deciphered - based on the testimony of an unnamed witness, an FSB coast guard officer, who compared the position of the plane at the moment it touched the water with a motorcycle moving on its rear wheel.

On February 7, the Kommersant newspaper reported the creation of a mathematical model of the last flight of the Tu-154, which included the flight path of the airliner and the operating parameters of all its systems, including engine mode and rudder positions, obtained from the flight recorder. According to reports from the same Kommersant on March 14, 2017, the technical part of the investigation into the disaster has now been completed. The results are described as "shocking". From the experts' conclusions it follows that the plane did not fall, but crashed while landing on water in a controlled flight. Instead of continuing to climb, managing pilot Roman Volkov, for unknown reasons, began descending. The source suggests that the pilot was disoriented in space: “Gaining altitude in the dark, above the sea, the pilot did not visually control his position, since he did not see any landmarks ahead or even the horizon. Even the stars, which were both above and below at the same time - in the form of reflections on the surface of the water - could disorient the crew. In this difficult situation, the pilot, according to experts, had to completely trust the instruments, the readings of which commander Volkov apparently ignored, trusting his experience and physiological sensations. So, for example, the overload that arose during the acceleration of the machine could create for the pilot the illusion of gaining altitude, while in fact the plane was descending.”

It is separately noted that the investigation team of the Ministry of Defense is now studying the entire professional biography of the deceased pilot, flight training, medical records, results of psychological tests, as well as the pilot’s rest regime. Failure to retract flaps are no longer mentioned.

Loss of spatial orientation has already been mentioned as the cause of the disaster. On April 2, 2016, a Eurocopter EC-130B helicopter made a hard landing in the village of Bezverkhovo, Primorsky Territory, resulting in the death of the pilot. The Interstate Aviation Committee (IAC) mentions bad weather, loss of visibility of landmarks and the natural horizon line. On March 19, 2016, a Boeing 737-800 flying from Sharm el-Sheikh crashed while landing at Rostov-on-Don airport. 62 people died. The reason is again cited as the loss of orientation of the crew in difficult weather conditions, which could have been contributed to by the non-standard display of the main flight instrument for Russia. However, it is known that the weather conditions at the time of departure of the Tu-154 were close to ideal, and Roman Volkov had more than 1,900 hours of flight time on the Tu-154, equipped to all standards.

Elena Kostyuchenko

Experts' opinions

Vadim Lukashevich,

independent aviation expert, candidate technical sciences

— New data in the investigation of the Tu-154 crash in Sochi is, excuse me, bullshit. They do not bring us any closer to understanding the causes of the tragedy. If this was the first data about the disaster and there was no information before that, it could be called a premature version. And so a lot of questions arise.

First: what position were the plane's flaps in? Even if the pilot lost his orientation, did not care about the instruments, trusted his feelings, he could not forget that he was actually taking off, and the flaps should have been retracted long ago, and not be in a half-opened state at the moment of impact. Second: the pilot, like the passengers on the plane, must understand by their feelings whether the plane is gaining altitude or losing altitude. After all, in the first minutes of the flight the altitude climb is the most intense. Third: if the plane did not approach supercritical angles of attack, then how can we explain the words of eyewitnesses who saw the plane flying with its nose very high? Is this situation really called “absolutely normal mode”?

Judging by the results of the technical investigation, the plane was descending normally. Between the lines we read that he extended the flaps, but did not retract them (unless, of course, we return to the story with the flaps not initially retracted). That is, for some reason the pilot moved the car into the landing position. In this case, talking about the pilot’s disorientation is simply not serious.

I am also confused by the description of the disorientation of the pilots due to the stars reflected in the sea. The sea near the surf line is not a perfectly flat surface of a pond or puddle. It's quite difficult to see the moon there. I can’t help but feel that these new investigation data are nothing more than testing the waters with a view to identifying the plane pilots as the culprits of the tragedy. At first they told us about the pilot’s 3,000 hours of flight time and experience, and now they are studying his medical record and the teachers who taught him to fly. It was Volkov's military crew that transported the cosmonauts to Baikonur. Such tasks are not trusted to just anyone.

Andrey Krasnoperov,

Air Force major, pilot

- I judge by facts. The last radio exchange between the pilots sounded like this: “Stand up! Racks! Flaps! Commander, we are falling." What kind of landing could there be here? 70 seconds from takeoff, about 50 seconds off the ground. Obviously, a mistake was made - the flaps were removed instead of the landing gear. The plane reached a supercritical angle of attack, speed 360, without flaps and landing gear extended, it simply fell on its tail. How could you prepare for landing? Let go of the steering wheel, let the plane accelerate, and do not take it to these angles; pilots have a special device for this. And then... The right pilot confused the landing gear with the flaps, and the second one did not appreciate it, did not understand what happened to the plane, continuing to take off at a normal angle.

As a pilot, I could support the theory that the pilots wanted to land the plane. And they could have done this if those same banal mistakes had not been made. At the moment they were discovered, it was no longer possible to change the situation. Our pilots do not know how to control a ship at supercritical angles of attack, only testers. I don’t want to blame the pilots, they fought to the last, believe me, none of us are kamikazes and don’t want to die. They took off to Sochi at five in the morning, before that there was an overnight flight from Moscow, given the fatigue and workload, they could have mixed something up.

Yuri Sytnik,

Honored Pilot of Russia

— It is premature to talk about the final version of the crash. And discussing information leaks or speculation and rumors is not entirely correct in relation to the relatives of the victims, including the Tu-154 pilots. I don't believe the pilots intended to land on water. They simply controlled the plane until the last moment, before colliding with the water surface. The crew was able to control the ship, they did not lose their performance, they realized the criticality of the situation and tried to get the plane out of it. This is not a landing. This is a controlled plane crash.

Why did they have to land in the sea? The engines were working, and so were the instruments. If an emergency situation arose, they could land at the airfield, and if there were no problems, then calmly continue the flight. It was possible to talk about versions - that the engine failed, that they collided with birds, that the flaps were not removed, that they were confused with the landing gear, that they lost control - at the initial stage, until evidence was discovered. Now the parametric media and flight recorders have been deciphered; it is enough to wait a month or a month and a half to have all the information about what happened on board.

Igor Deldyuzhov,

President of the Sheremetyevo Union of Flight Personnel

— Loss of orientation in space is a common occurrence. And it occurs mainly in tired pilots. According to the International Civil Aviation Organization, crew fatigue is a contributing cause in 30% of accidents. This may also have something to do with this story. At about six o'clock in the morning they took off from Sochi, arriving there at about 4 o'clock, from Chkalovsky they could leave at half past one, and from midnight prepare for departure. What did they do during the day? Before departure, they could well have been busy at work instead of resting. In general, this planned night flight is incomprehensible to me. Civil aviation aircraft, such as Aeroflot, often fly at night, but this is due to scheduling issues and reduced time on the ground. Why did the military board need the rush?

Judging by the latest published data, the pilot was guided by “his experience and physiological sensations.” This is strange for me, because the crew was flying not during the day, but at night, when the piloting is carried out using instruments that record pitch, vertical speed of climb or descent, roll... This is all guesswork - in order to say anything concrete, you need to wait until the end of the investigation. And so one can assume a lot. For example, one of the pilots could lose consciousness, and the second could not detect it in time. Or the crew's interaction could be disrupted in some other way. At Aeroflot, such moments are practiced on simulators. Do they teach this in the army? Don't know. In addition, I am interested in the chain of command. In civil aviation, the co-pilot is a full member of the crew who has the right to vote and influence decision-making. How is it going with the military? Can a junior in rank make comments to a senior?

Recorded by Daria Kobylkina

 

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