“Why is the co-pilot silent? Versions about the crash of that 154.

Over the Black Sea, became the 73rd airliner of this family, lost as a result of aviation accidents. The total number of deaths in such accidents for 44 years has reached 3 thousand 263 people. The Yuga.ru portal looked into the history of the aircraft's operation and recalled the largest accidents with its participation.

Tu-154 is a passenger aircraft developed in the 1960s in the USSR at the Tupolev design bureau. It was designed for the needs of medium-haul airlines and for a long time was the most massive Soviet jet passenger aircraft.

The first flight was carried out on October 3, 1968. Tu-154 was mass-produced from 1970 to 1998. From 1998 to 2013, small-scale production of the Tu-154M modification was carried out at the Aviakor plant in Samara. A total of 1,026 vehicles were manufactured. Until the end of the 2000s, it was one of the most common aircraft on medium-range routes in Russia.

The aircraft with tail number RA-85572, which crashed on December 25, 2016 over the Black Sea, was manufactured in 1983 and belonged to the Tu-154B-2 modification. This modification was produced from 1978 to 1986: an economy class cabin designed for 180 passengers, an improved automatic on-board control system. In 1983, the RA-85572 board was transferred to the USSR Air Force.

In the opinion of some Tu-154 pilots, the plane is too complicated for a mass passenger airliner and requires high qualifications of both flight and ground personnel.

At the end of the 20th century, the aircraft, designed in the 1960s, became obsolete, and airlines began to replace it with modern analogues - the Boeing 737 and Airbus A320.

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

In the mid-2000s, the aircraft was gradually decommissioned. The main reason is the low fuel efficiency of the engines. Since the aircraft was designed in the 1960s, the issue of engine efficiency was not before the developers. The economic crisis of 2008 also contributed to the acceleration of the process of decommissioning the aircraft. In 2008, the entire Tu-154 fleet was withdrawn by S7, the next year it was done by Rossiya and Aeroflot. In 2011, the operation of the Tu-154 was stopped by Ural Airlines. In 2013, the airliners of this type were removed from the air fleet by UTair, the largest Tu-154 operator at that time.

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

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

Major accidents of domestic Tu-154

02/19/1973, Prague, 66 dead

The Tu-154 plane was performing a regular passenger flight from Moscow to Prague, when, while landing, it suddenly went into a rapid descent, not reaching 470 m to the runway, crashed into the ground and collapsed. 66 people out of 100 on board were killed. This is the first incident in the history of the Tu-154. The Czechoslovak commission could not establish the causes of the accident, only suggesting that during the landing approach, the airliner unexpectedly fell into a zone of turbulence, which led to a loss of stability. The Soviet commission came to the opinion that the cause of the disaster was the error of the aircraft commander, who, during the landing approach, accidentally, due to the imperfection of the control system, changed the angle of inclination of the stabilizer.

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

The plane, flying on the route Alma-Ata - Rostov-on-Don - Simferopol, crashed almost immediately after takeoff. The plane demolished two residential barracks and four residential buildings, as a result of which nine people were injured on the ground. According to the official version, the catastrophe occurred due to a sudden atmospheric disturbance that caused a powerful downdraft air flow (up to 14 m / s) and a strong tailwind (up to 20 m / s) during takeoff, at the time of mechanization harvesting, with a high takeoff weight. in a high-altitude airfield and high air temperature. The combination of these factors at low flight altitude and with a sudden lateral roll, the correction of which briefly distracted the crew, predetermined the fatal outcome of the flight.

11/16/1981, Norilsk, 99 dead

The liner was completing a passenger flight from Krasnoyarsk and was landing when it lost altitude and landed on the field, not reaching about 500 m to the strip, after which it crashed into a radio beacon embankment and collapsed. 99 people out of 167 on board were killed. According to the conclusion of the commission, the cause of the disaster was the loss of longitudinal controllability of the aircraft at the final stage of the landing approach due to the design features of the aircraft. In addition, the crew realized too late that the situation was threatening an accident, and the decision to go around was taken out of time.

12/23/1984, Krasnoyarsk, 110 dead

The liner was supposed to perform a passenger flight to Irkutsk when an engine failure occurred during the climb. The crew decided to return, but a fire broke out during the landing approach, which destroyed the control systems. The car crashed to the ground 3 km before the runway number 29 and collapsed. The primary cause of the disaster was the destruction of the disk of the first stage of one of the engines, which occurred due to the presence of fatigue cracks. The cracks were caused by a manufacturing defect.

07/10/1985, Uchkuduk, 200 dead

This disaster was the largest in the number of deaths in the history of Soviet aviation and Tu-154 aircraft. The airliner, performing a regular flight on the Karshi - Ufa - Leningrad route, lost speed 46 minutes after taking off at an altitude of 11,600 meters, fell into a flat spin and crashed to the ground.

According to the official conclusion, this happened under the influence of a high non-standard outside temperature, a small margin in the angle of attack and engine thrust. The crew made a number of deviations from the requirements, lost speed - and did not cope with piloting the aircraft. An unofficial version is widespread: before departure, the crew's rest schedule was violated, as a result of which the total time of the pilots' wakefulness was almost 24 hours. And soon after the start of the flight, the crew fell asleep.

12/07/1995, Khabarovsk Territory, 98 dead

The Tu-154B-1 airliner of the Khabarovsk United Air Squadron, flying along the route Khabarovsk - Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk - Khabarovsk - Ulan-Ude - Novosibirsk, crashed into Mount Bo-Jausa, 274 km from Khabarovsk. The cause of the disaster, presumably, was the asymmetric pumping of fuel from the tanks. The ship's captain mistakenly increased the resulting right-hand roll, and the flight became uncontrollable.

07/04/2001, Irkutsk, 145 dead

While landing at the Irkutsk airport, the airliner suddenly fell into a flat spin and crashed to the ground. During the landing approach, the crew allowed the aircraft's speed to drop below the permissible speed by 10-15 km / h. The autopilot, switched on to maintain altitude, increased the pitch angle with a decrease in speed, which led to an even greater loss of speed. Having discovered a dangerous situation, the crew added a mode to the engines, deflected the steering wheel to the left and away from themselves, which led to a rapid increase in vertical speed and an increase in roll to the left. Having lost spatial orientation, the pilot tried to take the plane out of the roll, but with his actions he only increased it. The State Commission named the crew's erroneous actions as the cause of the crash.

04.10.2001, Black Sea, 78 dead

The Tu-154M airliner of Siberia Airlines operated on the Tel Aviv - Novosibirsk route, but crashed into the Black Sea 1 hour and 45 minutes after takeoff. According to the conclusion of the Interstate Aviation Committee, the plane was inadvertently shot down by a Ukrainian S-200 anti-aircraft missile launched during a Ukrainian military exercise on the Crimean Peninsula. Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksandr Kuzmuk apologized for the incident. Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma acknowledged Ukraine's responsibility for the incident and dismissed the Minister of Defense.

08.24.2004, Kamensk, 46 dead

The plane took off from Moscow and headed for Sochi. During the flight over the Rostov region, a strong explosion occurred in the tail section of the liner. The plane lost control and began to fall. The crew tried with all their might to keep the plane in the air, but the uncontrollable airliner crashed to the ground near the village of Gluboky, Kamensky District, Rostov Region, and completely collapsed. The explosion in the plane was staged by a suicide bomber. Immediately after the terrorist attacks (on the same day, a Tu-134 plane exploded on the Moscow-Volgograd flight), the terrorist organization "Islambuli Brigades" claimed responsibility for them. But later Shamil Basayev said that he had prepared the terrorist attacks.

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

08/22/2006, Donetsk, 170 dead

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

"The lack of control over the flight speed and failure to comply with the instructions of the Airplane Flight Manual (Flight Operation Manual) to prevent the aircraft from entering the stall mode in case of unsatisfactory interaction in the crew did not prevent the situation from becoming catastrophic.", - said in the final conclusion of the Interstate Aviation Commission.

04/10/2010, Smolensk, 96 dead

The presidential airliner Tu-154M of the Polish Air Force was flying on the Warsaw-Smolensk route, but during the approach to the Smolensk-Severny airfield in the conditions of heavy fog, the airliner collided with trees, capsized, crashed to the ground and completely collapsed. All 96 people on board were killed, including the President of Poland Lech Kaczynski, his wife Maria Kaczynska, as well as famous Polish politicians, almost all the high military command and public and religious leaders. They were on a private visit to Russia as a Polish delegation to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the Katyn massacre. An investigation by the Interstate Aviation Committee found that all aircraft systems were working normally before hitting the ground; because of the fog, the visibility at the airfield was lower than the allowable for landing, about which the crew was notified. The reasons for the crash were the wrong actions of the aircraft crew and psychological pressure on him.

An overload of the Tu-154 by 10-12 tons could not have caused the crash of the airliner in the Black Sea near Sochi on December 25, 2016. Our expert, an experienced military pilot with more than 10 thousand flight hours, of which about 4 thousand are the commander of the Tu-154 crew, is convinced of this. He told Novaya Gazeta that he could give official testimony to the commission to investigate the Sochi disaster and substantiate his version of the tragedy. The editorial office of Novaya, in turn, can provide the commission for the investigation of the disaster with personal data and a contact phone number of a veteran of military aviation, who acted as an expert for the newspaper.

Our expert contacted the editors immediately after the publication of yet another version of the Sochi disaster: the online newspaper Gazeta.ru, referring to the experts involved in the investigation, said that before takeoff from the Chkalovsky airfield near Moscow, the weight of the aircraft was 99.6 tons, including 24 tons of fuel, the plane was refueled in Sochi, and its weight reached 110 tons, which exceeded the permissible 98 tons. “If the crew commander knew about the excess of the standard take-off weight by more than 10 tons, he would either refuse the flight or take off taking into account that the plane is overloaded,” concludes “Gazeta.ru”.

However, the Investigative Committee of Russia has already denied information about the overload of the Tu-154. The official representative of the department, Svetlana Petrenko, said: "The hypotheses published in the media about the possible causes of the plane crash are not based on facts and are the personal judgments of their authors." According to Petrenko, conclusions about the causes of the tragedy will be made only after the "complex of flight technical examinations". At the same time, the representative of the TFR did not announce the timing of these examinations. Although, according to Novaya Gazeta's information, obtained from a source familiar with the investigation, all the necessary examinations have already been carried out, and the expert opinions have been transferred to the official commission to investigate the causes of the disaster.

The expert of the "New" version of the Tu-154 overload also considers untenable, but, unlike the representative of the TFR, he backed up his opinion with arguments.

“I can't imagine kamikaze pilots appearing in the air force, making decisions about takeoff, not knowing whether the plane is overloaded or not. Loading and refueling of aircraft, of course, is carried out by ground services, but always under the supervision of the technical staff of the crew and the co-pilot. The mouse will not slip. This is an axiom, - said my interlocutor. “Besides, 10 tons is a lot, but this is not a catastrophic overload for modern aircraft.

My interlocutor recalled the events of 1973, the war in the Middle East:

- Then the military transport aviation, as they say, "lived in the sky", providing the transfer of goods to Syria, Iraq, Egypt. The commander of the military transport aviation issued a special order, which allowed him to increase the take-off weight for the An-12 aircraft from 61 to 65 tons. In the order of the Minister of Defense of the USSR "On air transportation by aircraft M.O." the procedure for preparing goods and personnel (passengers) for transportation is clearly regulated.

But in this order it was emphasized that the commander of the aircraft is obliged to obtain documents for the cargo. And this 1973 order has not yet been canceled.

Analyzing the actions of the Tu-154 crew that took off on December 25, 2016 from the Sochi airport, our expert drew attention to another discrepancy:

- Even if you believe that the crew, sensing something was wrong, attempted an emergency landing, the pilots had to make a left turn, trying to enter the second lane (there are two lanes in Sochi, visually they represent the letter V). And the wreckage of the crashed plane was found in the Khosta area. It turns out that the crew tried to make a right turn? In addition, if they were really going to land in an emergency, the aircraft commander would notify the crew and the airport about it. And this would be recorded by flight recorders and airport dispatchers.

Our expert continues to adhere to the version with which Novaya has already acquainted its readers: the takeoff of the Tu-154 was carried out by a non-staff crew. Its essence: the full-time crew commander of the Tu-154 during takeoff performed the functions of a co-pilot, however, being in his place, and a pilot who had extensive flying experience took off, but on other types of aircraft, for example, on the An-72.

According to our expert's version, the Tu-154 crew commander took his place in the cabin, but to his right, in the co-pilot's seat, there was not a crew member, but an "outsider" who had no right to be there - not only not trained and not allowed for flights on this type of aircraft, but also an officer who is not included in the flight task, senior in rank and position

“Here are the photos published in the press,” my interlocutor shows. - Here in this picture you can clearly see that the chassis was in the extended position. Here is one of the racks. A thick short part that "lies" on the bogie and the suspension unit to the center section is surrounded by a thin red oval - this is the shock absorber strut itself. The long slender part indicated by the bold red arrow is the retract / retract cylinder. Its length corresponds to the length of this cylinder in the extended position of the landing gear, like an aircraft standing on the ground. When the landing gear is retracted, the retraction cylinder rod under the action of the slurry pressure extends, pushing the strut back, and flips the landing gear bogie so that the last pair of wheels becomes the first in flight, while the retraction cylinder becomes much longer than in the picture.

Our expert shows another photo:

- This is another landing gear with the front pair of wheels torn off. The wheels could come off only when they hit the water. The conclusion is obvious: the chassis has been released. And here is a shot of the left wing. What do we see? Flaps retracted.

My interlocutor is indignant:

- Already after our conversation in March, the "recording of conversations in the cockpit of the aircraft" was made public.

On the recording, in absolute silence, a calm command "Retract the flaps" is heard, and after ten seconds a shout is heard: "We are falling!" Meanwhile, there is the "Technology of the crew of the Tu-154". This document is strictly followed by all pilots flying this type of aircraft. According to "Technology", after the command of the commander "Retract the flaps", the co-pilot says: "Retract the flaps."

Then the navigator reports: "The flaps are retracted synchronously, the stabilizer is shifted." When the flaps are retracted, the navigator reports: "The flaps, slats are retracted, the stabilizer is zero, the RN and RV displays are off." None of this is in the released "cockpit recordings".

My interlocutor suggests that they want to hide something from us. And that is why they "leaked" into a public or a recording on which "outside" voices were overwritten, or this is a recording at all that has nothing to do with the Sochi disaster.

Again, the Novaya Gazeta expert is ready to testify and substantiate his version of the tragedy officially to the commission to investigate the Sochi disaster.

A commission of the Russian Ministry of Defense has completed an investigation into the circumstances of the crash of the Tu-154 during takeoff from the airfield in Sochi on December 25, 2016. The main conclusion: the cause of the tragedy was the erroneous actions of the crew commander, who could not orient himself in space and situation.

Photos of the pages of the printed report of the commission appointed by order of the Minister of Defense of the Russian Federation Sergei Shoigu to investigate the circumstances and causes of the Tu-154 B-2 disaster of the 800th special aviation base, which happened on December 25, 2016 near the Sochi airfield, published on Wednesday, May 31 , telegram channel "Captain Vrungel".

In the document, the entire last flight of the aircraft is restored by the minute, and at the end and by the second. The takeoff from the Chkalovsky airfield was carried out at 01:38. At 3 hours 43 minutes. Moscow time, the crew made a technical landing in Sochi for refueling. Passengers were not embarked or disembarked. Apparently, until then, everything went smoothly. However, on departure from Sochi, the problems began on the ground.

"After the launch, while taxiing behind the escort vehicle, the aircraft commander (PIC) experienced difficulties in determining his position on the territory of the aerodrome due to his idea of ​​the upcoming take-off course. These difficulties were due to the complex system of taxiways and the presence of two runways at the aerodrome ( runways) ", - said in the report of the commission. This is somewhat strange, since it was previously reported that the commander of the ship, Major Roman Volkov, made several flights to Syrian Latakia, including from the Sochi airfield.

At 5 hours 24 minutes. 36 sec. the crew started to take off. "A special situation arose at 5 hours 24 minutes 42.8 seconds, for 7 seconds of flight, at a speed of 70 km / h, when the PIC emotionally began to ask the crew about the take-off course. the crew at the take-off stage led to the PIC's omission of control of significant take-off parameters, the distraction of the crew members from their functional duties at this stage of the flight, "the members of the commission reconstruct the events.

Then everything went even worse. For some reason, "at the 53rd second of the flight, in deviation from the pre-flight height of the flaps (500 m), the PIC at an altitude of 157 m gave the command to retrace the flaps," the investigators of the Ministry of Defense write. "As a result of the actions of the PIC by the controls during takeoff, the aircraft, at an altitude of 231 m at a speed of 360 km / h, switched to a descent with a decrease in vertical overload to less than 1 unit. At the same time, the navigator of the spacecraft, while exhaling, said:" Wow, e-my! " ...

Then the siren went off and the red board "Dangerous: earth!" The crew informed the commander of these signals, that the plane was descending, but it was no longer possible to prevent the ship from colliding with the sea surface. At 5 o'clock. 25 minutes 49 seconds, on the 73rd second of the flight, the plane hit the water and completely collapsed. The crew and all passengers were killed.

The cause of the Tu-154 plane crash "was a violation of the spatial orientation (situational awareness) of the aircraft commander, which led to his erroneous actions with the aircraft controls, as a result of which the aircraft went down during the climb and collided with the water surface." The members of the investigating commission came to such conclusions. In turn, the impaired orientation of the pilot in space and the situation, in their opinion, could be the result of "excessive neuropsychic stress" that arose against the background of occupational stress and natural fatigue.

At the same time, the commission revealed massive violations in the work of the 800th aviation base itself and military transport aviation in general: there were no crew retraining measures, there was no situational briefing, and even control over the health of the pilots was carried out more than two hours before departure. ...

The result was a tragedy that claimed the lives of 92 people, including the head and artists of the Alexandrov ensemble, the head of the Fair Help Foundation, Elizaveta Glinka, and journalists.

Independent technical expert Yuri Antipov again reviewed the main version of the plane crash and presented arguments that refute it.

Recall that the Tu-154 crashed off the coast of Sochi on December 25, 2016. On board, flying to Syria, there were 92 people. These are artists of the Alexandrov ensemble, journalists, military personnel, a well-known public figure, Doctor Liza, and others. Early in the morning after taking off from Sochi airport, the plane crashed into the Black Sea near the coast.

According to Antipov, the version of the explosion, on which he insists, was officially refuted literally right there. However, the expert claims that the liner could only be torn apart into tiny fragments by an explosion. This version also proves that only macroscopic fragmentary remains of the people who were in the cabin are left. In addition, the outcome of the investigation, announced by the Ministry of Defense and reducing the cause of the fall to the pilot's loss of orientation, has a huge number of holes.

Antipov again cites the chronology of events. The plane, having taken off from Moscow, landed in the resort city for refueling. The expert recalled that the Tu-154 needs no more than half an hour for this. Instead, the board remained on the ground for three hours. At the same time, passengers were not released.

After that, the commander of the crew, Roman Volkov, asked the dispatcher to take off from the very beginning of the long runway, arguing that the plane was "heavy". However, Antipov reminds that the plane was unloaded as much as possible. According to the official version, there was nothing else on board except passengers' belongings and medicines with food.

The expert suggested that it was no coincidence that the commander demanded the take-off from the beginning of the runway. Apparently, in Sochi, the plane was loaded with valuable cargo, since the work lasted for about three hours. You can just "throw" things in an hour.

After takeoff, the plane, and the Tu-154, compared to other airliners, has a powerful lifting force, was unable to gain altitude (due to a pilot error) and after 70 seconds from 250 meters it crashed into the sea. Antipov recalls that while the people who were in the salon turned into genetic material.

As everyone knows, a forensic medical examination (Forensic Science) was carried out to identify the remains on board. According to the SME, not all the bodies of passengers after the disaster turned into genetic remains. Some of them, 17 bodies, have survived. And these people were sitting in business class, which is located behind the cockpit. How was it determined that the bodies of business class passengers had survived? Very simple. The bodies of the leadership of the ensemble and the so-called "VIPs" survived. Contrary to the speculations of the "experts", the body of the Tu-154 pilot also remained intact, - the expert explained.

Antipov recalled that according to the main version, the liner, which collapsed from such a height at a speed of 500 kilometers, namely at such a speed, the Tu-154 collided with water, was torn to the smallest pieces.

The question is that one of the wings remained virtually intact. However, Antipov says that there is nothing surprising here. In his opinion, there was an explosion on board, and the wing was damaged from a collision with water. He was not touched by the force of the explosion, the epicenter of which was in the cargo hold. And after falling from such a height and at such a speed, the plane shatters into pieces.

Another proof of the explosion version Antipov sees in the fact that the lower part of the fuselage was ripped open. The break line was just on the floor line separating the cargo and passenger compartments.

It was very clearly shown that the internal structure of the walls in the cargo compartment turned brown and burned from the action of the high temperature. Obvious facts have shown that the aircraft engines located in the rear part, before being immersed in the Black Sea water, sucked in finely dispersed remnants from the explosion on board, like vacuum cleaners. And this hot, finely dispersed material of the explosion products penetrated into the structure of the engine air intake channels, and even sea water could not wash it off, ”said Antipov.

Yuri Antipov also noted one very important detail. After the expert spoke with people familiar with the investigation into the causes of the disaster, it turned out that wooden splinters were found in the remains of the dead.

We remember that at the site in Adler, where all the collected fragments of the crashed liner were taken, there was not a single passenger seat. But there should have been more than a hundred of them. Apparently, on this liner bound for Syria, all the passengers, including the pilots, sat on wooden stools. But maybe the cargo of the Ministry of Defense, which was carefully and secretly loaded in Adler for so long, was in wooden boxes? But this version is fantastic. The version with stools is much more realistic, - summed up Yuri Antipov.

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