Tragedy with the plane tu 154 last. “Unless it’s collective insanity. Humanitarian assistance during military conflicts

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 one, 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, this is not new information, but an interpretation of part of the information that 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 were not enough to call him an experienced pilot, but before they said that Volkov was an experienced pilot), 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 flown flights 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 a famous person, but there were three guards with me, and they didn’t ask for their passports or inspect their luggage.”

The version of the explosion was voiced by the federal media, citing data from the European satellite Sentinel -1B, which was flying over the Black Sea at the time of the tragedy. It was he who recorded that the plane fell into the water after the explosion.

As the portal "News of the Day" reports, based on data transmitted by the European Sentinel-1B satellite, a Russian plane taking off from Adler was shot down as a result of sabotage.

According to this version, the Tu-154 crew, being six kilometers from the coast, planned to return to the runway. But in a matter of seconds, the fate of all passengers on the liner was doomed. First, the stabilizer was torn off by the roots, then the nacelle flew off from the landing gear, after which the flap hit the engine and broke the turbine.

Experts believe that it is highly likely that sabotage occurred using miniature external magnetic explosive devices attached to the aircraft at the airport. The explosion happened on outside body and had a strictly directed action. The crew and passengers were doomed.

It becomes clear why, immediately after the tragedy, a decision was made to “disband the air base in Chkalovsky,” from where the Tu-154 took off on its last flight.

Famous economist and political scientist Mikhail Delyagin commented: new information: “This version finally describes in detail the course of the accident, and most importantly, it explains the huge distance - more than three kilometers! - a scattering of aircraft debris, cynically hushed up by official sources.

It remains to clarify the necessary details and find out the organizer of this sabotage, although the hysterical jubilation of a number of prominent liberals, I think, testifies to this with exhaustive convincingness.”

The fatal damage was caused by miniature external magnetic explosive devices attached from the outside. These sensors, installed on the ground, were triggered. Perhaps that is why the blast wave scattered fragments of the liner over a radius of more than three kilometers in the Black Sea.

According to the portal, this version has a place to be, because it was not without reason that literally immediately after the tragedy it was decided to disband the air base in Chkalovsky, from where the Tu-154 flew to Syria.

Let us remind you that on December 25, a Tu-154 crashed in the sky over Sochi. He was heading to Syria. 92 people died, including a native of the Ulyanovsk region, Alexander Serov.

Residents Krasnoyarsk Territory on that flight, four died (according to other sources, five) - three dancers from the ensemble, one military man and a flight engineer.

I had problems posting an article called “Mysterious Mechanical Impact”; one of the sites with which I have recently been collaborating refused to publish it. In the end, on the morning of December 31, the article was published by the freest FREE PRESS in the Russian Federation. Thanks to them. The whole point is who you (me, you, he, she, they) serve: the people or the authorities.

I serve the people, so it was difficult for the site that serves the authorities to take material containing suspicions about the death of TU-154.

Here are some more wonderful thoughts on the death of the TU-154, from my friend, a military expert, I received them an hour ago:
“The collapse of the aircraft in the air is obvious when the remains of the aircraft are scattered over a radius of more than a kilometer from an altitude of less than 600 meters.
When an entire plane hits the water, parts of the plane “spread” into more than three the size of an airplane, and this is 120 meters, impossible.

Remember, a bullet, for example, from an Austrian Glock-17 pistol flies under water no more than 5 meters, with an exit speed of about 350 meters per second (I have personal experience). The plane fell at a speed of no more than 150 meters per second... but parts of the plane are not a small bullet from a pistol! Therefore, the scattering of parts of an airplane under water of 120 meters is already “beyond the limit”, which means that parts of the airplane fell into the water after being separated in the air.
They separated from “external mechanical influence.” The aircraft usually has a 5-fold safety margin even for vibration. You have flown on airplanes and you know that airplanes easily pass through turbulence zones when carrying passengers, although the plane shakes a lot, and nothing happens.

Now imagine that the plane, at a speed of no more than 360 kilometers per hour (100 meters per second), fell apart. From the fall, parts of the plane could still increase the falling speed to 150 meters per second, but it is impossible to “swim” in the water and under water at a depth of 60 meters for another kilometer. This means that the plane broke up in the air due to “mechanical impact”...

I think that it will be almost impossible to “recognize” directly a certain mechanical external influence as an electronically provoked explosion due to the political consequences. The plane of the Ministry of Defense..., it means there was a trivial betrayal on the ground, a betrayal outright or through sloppiness..., I’m very sad to write about this, but it doesn’t work out any other way - it’s just strength of materials (resistance of materials) for which I have always had " 5"...

But it seems the investigation will be blurred [...........]

I’m afraid that they won’t talk about electronic weapons either, they’ll blame it on some kind of flaps, pilot errors, a flock of birds (from which three engines flew apart, the birds were the size of a whale), bad aviation kerosene, a strong underwater current, and so on.

The plane will not fall apart within a kilometer radius for any of these reasons. By the way, please note that recently the Russian Federation has been very proud and advertised its electronic warfare (electronic warfare) systems, so they could have received an asymmetrical response.

Nowadays there are portable electronic warfare systems that suppress everything within a radius of several meters. Everything is phones, WI-FI, satellite navigation and even TV channel switching remotes. It weighs 150 grams.

Just imagine, from a NATO ship the power of an electronic warfare pulse is enough to simply burn all the electronics of the aircraft, possibly burning it from the inside, which will lead to an instantaneous unpredictable overload in the aircraft’s systems, and its possible disintegration.

You can also imagine it from a device weighing about 5 kilograms, which could have been “placed” on board before the flight.

I hope I'm wrong, but we'll see, they promised to give an analysis of the accident soon.

By official version In the crash of the Tu-154 in Sochi on December 25, 2016, an orangutan was at the controls of the plane instead of a person, who began to jerk the control sticks absurdly, which led to the tragedy.

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

But the Tu-154 recorders showed that the plane was fully operational. And it also doesn’t work to assume that the pilot began to take off in a dead state in front of other crew members, who were not suicides.

And his voice on the recorder is absolutely sober.

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

Cunning journalists discovered that the plane may have been heavily overloaded - hence all the consequences. Moreover, it was reloaded not at the Sochi airport in Adler, where it made an intermediate landing, but at the Chkalovsky military airfield near Moscow, from where it took off. The weight of excess cargo is more than 10 tons. However, at Chkalovsky, according to documents, kerosene was poured into this Tu-1542B-2 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 uncritical. The pilot probably noted that the takeoff took place with an effort - but there could be many reasons for this: wind,

atmospheric pressure

, air temperature.

But in Adler, where the plane sat down to refuel, this refueling played a fatal role. Fuel was added to the plane's tanks just below the cap - up to 35.6 tons, which is why its take-off weight became more than 10 tons more than permissible.

And if we accept this version with an overload, everything further receives 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.

This happened at an altitude of 200 meters - and if the plane had remained at this level, even in violation of all the rules, the tragedy might not have happened.

But Volkov piloted the car outside its permissible modes - something no one had done before him, since overloaded flights are strictly prohibited. And how the plane behaved under these conditions is difficult to imagine. In addition, it is possible that that extra cargo, being poorly secured, also disrupted the alignment of the aircraft during takeoff.

As a result, there was a slight panic in the cabin. Pilots began to retract the flaps ahead of schedule in order to reduce air resistance and thereby gain speed faster.

Here a dangerous approach to the water began, over which the take-off line was. The speed was already decent - 500 km/h, Volkov suddenly took the helm to raise the plane, at the same time starting a turn - apparently, he decided to return to the airfield.

Then the irreparable happened: the plane, in response to the pilot’s actions, did not go up, but crashed into the water, scattering into fragments from the collision with it...

This scenario, based on recorder data, is absolutely consistent - and looks much more plausible than Shoigu’s delusional explanation that the pilot lost spatial orientation and began to descend instead of climbing. During takeoff, no spatial orientation is required from the pilot at all.…

There are two main instruments in front of him: an altimeter and a speed indicator, he monitors their readings without being distracted by the views outside the window...

One might also ask: how did an overloaded plane even get off the runway? The answer is simple: there is a so-called screen effect, which significantly increases the lifting force 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 - half-planes, half-ships, flying within this 15-meter altitude with a much larger load on board than those of equal power aircraft Well, now the most important questions.

And what exactly - you can guess anything here: boxes of vodka, shells, gold bars, Sobyanin tiles... And why they decided to send it not by cargo, but by passenger flight - there could also be any reasons. From sloppiness for the failure to send combat cargo, which they decided to cover up gradually - to the most 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 haystack that cannot be hidden from view.

But what exactly was there and what the true weight of it was - the pilots may not have known.

This is an army, where the order of the highest rank is higher than all instructions; and most likely that order was accompanied by 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 is faced with a choice: either make decent money - or be left without work and without pants. And the famous Russian, perhaps, at the same time, as they say, has not been canceled! Who ordered? There can also be a big spread here: from some Lieutenant Colonel, Deputy for Armaments -

to Colonel General.

Depending on what kind of cargo was brought onto the plane.

1. Shoigu’s version of “a violation of the commander’s spatial orientation (situational awareness), which led to erroneous actions with the aircraft controls” does not stand up to criticism. For any pilot, not only with 4,000 hours of flight time, like Volkov, but also with ten times less, takeoff is the simplest action that does not require any special skills. For example, landing in difficult weather conditions is a completely different matter. The crash 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 no one has ever crashed while taking off on a working plane.

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

The IAC has been stubbornly silent about the Adler disaster for 6 months now. On his website, where detailed analyzes of all flight accidents are published, there are only two on the subject of Adler’s short messages

that the investigation is ongoing. And another significant passage:

“The resources of research and expert institutions have been mobilized to investigate this disaster. Among them is the Interstate Aviation Committee, which has extensive experience in investigating accidents involving Tu-154 aircraft and the necessary resources to provide assistance in order to speed up the investigation. At the same time, the IAC informs that official comments on this investigation are provided exclusively by the Russian Ministry of Defense.”

That is, read, “we were silenced, sorry.”

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

Well, one more question: why do the military, led by their minister, hide this truth so much? And from whom - from Putin himself or from the people?

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

Or a colonel general, who is at the very top, is involved - and then there is also shame and disgrace: it turns out that after the change from Serdyukov to Shoigu, our army was not cleansed of general outrage?

And the very last thing. Remember, when we watched the film “Chapaev” as children, many of us shouted in the audience: “Chapay, run!” I just as spontaneously want today, when everything has practically become clear with the Adler tragedy, to shout to the pilot Volkov: “Don’t take this cargo! And if you take it, don’t fly higher than 200 meters above the sea!”

After all, if you look at the calm mind, which was not praised by the pilot caught in a storm of circumstances, he had a chance of salvation. Namely: when the plane is overloaded, do not even try to follow the instructions, which oblige you to rise to such and such a height at such and such a distance from the airfield. Violate it to hell, get a reprimand for it, even dismissal - but thereby save your life and the lives of others. That is, fly at a minimum altitude, burning off fuel, and when the weight of the plane drops in an hour and a half, begin lifting.

Another thing that comes to mind again is that if you decide to return to Adler, make a turn not by a standard turn with a side roll, which is what 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 increases greatly: a maneuver practically not used in modern aviation.

But even this chance, which could save this plane, in the future would still be illusory and deadly. Let’s say Volkov managed to get out of the disastrous situation set by the organizers of his flight. Then next time he or his colleague would be given not 10, but 15 extra tons of some “unspecified” cargo: after all, appetites grow as their satisfaction.

And the tragedy would have happened anyway - not in this case, then in the next, if its causes remained the same.

God grant that as a result of this catastrophe, someone in our armed forces will give someone a hard time, putting an end to the outrages that led to the inevitable outcome.

To calculate the mass of the crashed aircraft, special techniques were used, including using data from a parametric recorder raised from the bottom of the Black Sea.

As a result, it became known that on December 24, when taking off from the Chkalovsky airfield near Moscow, where the Tu-1542B-2 began its route, the take-off weight of the aircraft, together with 24 tons of fuel filled into it, was 99.6 tons. This exceeded the standards, but the deviation was 1 .6 tons was insignificant. At this weight, the plane usually takes off without any problems.

In Adler, no one got out of the Tu-154B-2, with the exception of the commander and co-pilot. Nothing additional was loaded onto the plane, but the plane was refueled to the maximum. Its tanks contained 35.6 tons of fuel.

According to experts, as a result, the take-off weight of the airliner was about 110 tons instead of the standard 98 tons.

Early in the morning of December 25, the Tu-154B-2 took off along a large runway (there are two in Adler). After this, the plane had to turn first to the right, then to the left, and then head for Latakia, to the Khmeimim airbase. However, problems began during the rise.

The plane took off from the Adler runway only 37 seconds after the start of the takeoff run, at a speed of 320 km/h, with a pitch angle of 4 to 6 degrees. All these parameters indicate that the plane had difficulty getting into the air. The rate of climb was 10 m/s instead of the usual 12-15 m/s.

2 seconds after takeoff, the crew commander pulled the steering wheel, raising the nose of the plane so that the pitch was already 10-12 degrees. For the pilot of an overloaded aircraft, these were very rash actions. The crew began retracting the flaps at an altitude of 150 m and at a speed of 345 km/h. Taking into account the significant excess of the standard take-off weight of the Tu-154, these actions should have been carried out at a higher speed.

The stall speed of an aircraft (low flight speed when the angle of attack reaches a critical value and the aircraft becomes uncontrollable) increases with weight and also depends on the position of the flaps (the more they are extended, the lower it is). Therefore, at a certain weight, the speed may be such that before the flaps are retracted it will be greater than the stalling speed, and after that it will be less.

On the voice recorder recordings, you can hear how the co-pilot asked the commander for permission to remove the mechanization, but the latter did not answer. The co-pilot apparently took his silence as a sign of agreement. The lifting force naturally began to fall sharply from the moment the mechanization began to be harvested.

The plane managed to reach an altitude of 200 m when the commander again made an unexpected movement - he moved the control column away from himself and then suddenly took it over again, losing his already small altitude in the maneuver.

The flaps had not yet been completely retracted when a system in the Tu-154 cockpit activated, signaling a dangerous approach to the ground. The flap angle was 5-7 degrees when the commander moved the helm and rudder pedals to the left. As planned, he should have done the opposite. The plane fell into a bank of 30 degrees.

At this moment, a signal of a dangerous roll sounds, to which no one pays attention. "We're falling!" - the co-pilot shouts.

The commander moves the steering wheel and pedals in reverse side and takes over the helm. At this moment the angle of attack was 10 degrees. At the same time, the aircraft continued to accelerate to 500 km/h. The speed increased, the roll increased, and the lift decreased. The Tu-154 had practically no altitude reserve.

A few seconds later, already with a bank of 50 degrees and at a speed of 540 km/h, the plane touched the water with its left wing. In such conditions, a collision with a water surface is equivalent to a collision with a rock. The plane crashed and its debris was scattered over a large area.

In total, the last flight of the Tu-154 lasted only 74 seconds.

Until the moment it hit the water, the plane was fully operational. The weather conditions at the Adler airfield at the time of takeoff were favorable: ambient temperature - 5 degrees above zero, humidity - 76%, pressure - 763 mm Hg. Art., side wind - 5 m/s. No dangerous weather conditions were observed.

It also turned out that the deceased crew, together with an experienced commander, took off from the same runway in Adler just two months before the disaster - on October 1, 2016.

Then the takeoff from the runway was made at a speed of 310 km/h. With a rate of climb of 12-15 m/s, the crew began to climb. At an altitude of 450 m, a turn to the right was made with a right bank of 20 degrees, then the plane made a turn to the left, and only then, at an altitude of 450 m, within 13-14 seconds the flaps, which had previously been in the takeoff position of 28 degrees, were retracted.

The actions of the experienced crew and the behavior of the serviceable aircraft during its next takeoff in Adler can only be explained by the fact that the Tu-154 commander did not know either the nature or the exact weight of the cargo on board, and therefore, the overload of his aircraft. That’s why fuel was poured into the plane in Adler. Probably, it would have been filled less if they knew the exact weight of the property that was loaded onto the plane in Chkalovsky.

Perhaps something relatively small in volume, but significant in its specific gravity, was placed on the plane.

If the crew commander knew that the standard take-off weight was exceeded by more than 10 tons, he would either refuse the flight or take off taking into account the fact that the plane was overloaded.

The latest actions of the crew can be explained by the fact that the pilots realized that something was wrong with the plane, and tried to return to the departure airfield in order to land on another, smaller runway in Adler. However, there was not enough height.

Didn't play the best role dark time days: the crew had no visual idea that there was very little left to the water surface.

On the Tu-154 plane, which crashed early in the morning of December 25, the artists of the Alexandrov Song and Dance Ensemble were flying, who were supposed to give a New Year's concert at Russian base Khmeimim in Syria. They were accompanied by film crews from Channel One and Zvezda. A total of 92 people died - 84 passengers and 8 crew members.

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.

The 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.

Aircraft operator - 223rd flying squad 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 presidential order Russian Federation dated January 15, 1993 No. 37-rp “On ensuring 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 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 may 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 in most cases. civil airports 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.

 

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