Accident of Tu-154 in Irkutsk on July 4, 2001

The Tu-154 was developed at the Tupolev Design Bureau in the 60s of the last century. In 1968, the jetliner made its first test flight, and later was put into mass production.

In the history of Soviet aviation, it became the most massive passenger jet air transport and remained in mass operation until the end of 2001. Over the entire history of its existence, more than a thousand medium-range jet vehicles have rolled off the assembly line. They flew all over Russia from Moscow to Yakutsk.

For 30 years of service, 72 aircraft were lost, 3263 people were killed. One of the typical accidents of a vessel of this class was the Tu-154 disaster in Irkutsk on July 4, 2001.

In the archives of the Interstate Aviation Committee, there is a chronicle of the accident on board RA-85845 of the Vladivostok Avia airline, which occurred on July 4, 2001 over Irkutsk. Tu-154M performed flight DD-352 from Yekaterinburg to Vladivostok and had to make a stopover in Irkutsk ... There were 136 passengers and 9 crew members on board. He is on the radar at the beginning of 3 o'clock in the morning. Communication with the crew was interrupted when the plane was already trying to land at the Irkutsk airport.

The only witnesses to the tragedy then were the workers of an agricultural enterprise in the village of Burdakovka, 4 kilometers from which the plane crashed. Locals are accustomed to the regular movement of aircraft overhead. They later claimed that the hum of the engines was unusual and unnatural. The farm shift duty ran out into the street and saw the descending liner, and then a ball of fire broke out and a powerful explosion thundered.

The liner, which got into a tailspin, fell from a height of 850 meters into a forest clearing. Only the tail section remained of it, the rest of the hull elements fell apart from the impact and the subsequent explosion into small parts and scattered tens of meters around. No one had a chance of survival.

The current Minister of Defense of the Russian Federation, Sergei Shoigu, who at that time was the head of the Russian Emergencies Ministry, personally supervised the search and rescue operation and said then that “the plane fell flat on the ground,” almost without encountering resistance on the way.

Causes of the Tu-154 disaster near Irkutsk in 2001

Hot on the heels of the disaster, a state commission was created to investigate the incident. By that time, the car had been in operation for only 5 years. Two months before the disaster, a Russian air carrier bought it in China and overhauled it.

Technical control also did not reveal any malfunctions. Moreover, a couple of minutes before the crash, the aircraft commander contacted the ground services and said that there were no incidents on board, and all technical parameters were normal.

Later, information was made public that the Tu-154 was unable to land on the first attempt, and already when entering the fourth loop at an altitude of 850 meters, it was turned in the opposite direction from the runway. The pilots were unable to level the liner, and he crashed to the ground.

A version of the simultaneous failure of all three engines was considered, but it also did not look final due to the fact that such a possibility was excluded in this modification. The data of both recorders found at the crash site were, of course, also checked. The final verdict pointed to the human factor.

How did the events develop?

The crew made a mistake while landing on the runway, as a result of which the speed dropped by 15 km / h. The altitude-maintaining autopilot at that moment increased the pitch angle, which further slowed the car. In this situation, the crew tried to withdraw the aircraft by increasing thrust and maneuvering to the left. But at that moment, due to the turn, the pilots lost their orientation, and the plane, sharply picking up speed, began to stall.

At the minimum altitude, an alarm was triggered, which forced both pilots to take the steering wheel too abruptly and pull it towards themselves, which played a fatal role. The following happened:

• the elevator deviated to -24;
• the liner went into a flat spin and headed down at a speed of 100 m / s.

The emergency lasted only 15 seconds. During the last meeting of the commission, the actions of the pilots were called "reflex" and corresponding to flight practice, but they did not manage to get the car out of the spin.

This disaster was the fourth in the region in 7 years. The airfield in Irkutsk at that time began to be called nothing more than the "aircraft graveyard". For a short period, 300 people died there.