Landing of Tu-124 on the Neva. August 21, 1963 Unrecognized heroes.

Landing of Tu-124 on the Neva is an aviation accident that happened in the skies over Leningrad on August 21, 1963. As a result of a combination of circumstances, a Tu-124 passenger plane splashed down on the Neva.
The world's first case of a civil aircraft landing on the water in an emergency.
This event is one of the few happy splashdowns among airliners, when all passengers and crew members survived.

Short-haul passenger aircraft Tu-124

Development of events

On August 21, 1963, the new Tu-124 passenger airliner of Aeroflot made a regular flight on the Tallinn-Moscow route. The plane took off from Ülemiste airport at 08:55 and headed for Vnukovo airport. Some time after takeoff, the crew members discovered that the front landing gear was jammed in a semi-retracted position. Landing at Tallinn airport was impossible due to fog, so the dispatchers decided not to send the plane to Moscow, but to land at the nearest Pulkovo airfield in Leningrad. He followed at low altitude to his destination. In Pulkovo itself, emergency services were put on alert: the fire-fighting equipment was brought to the unpaved strip where the plane was supposed to land on its belly, and doctors arrived. By 11:00, the liner was near the city and began to fly around the city at an altitude of about 500 meters, producing fuel. Each lap took about 15 minutes. At the same time, the team tried to fully extend the chassis using a pole. The aircraft commander was Viktor Yakovlevich Mostovoy. At 12:10, on the eighth circle, 21 km from the airport, when, according to the fuel gauges, there were about 750 liters of fuel (enough to reach Pulkovo), the left engine stopped due to a lack of fuel. The crew was given permission to fly through the city. However, after a short time, when the plane flew near St. Isaac's Cathedral and the Admiralty, the second engine also stalled. Thus, the liner began to glide from a half-kilometer height above the city center. The crew had no choice but to try to make a splashdown to the surface of the Neva. The plane passed the Liteiny bridge less than 90 meters from the surface of the water, flew over the Bolsheokhtinsky bridge at a height of 30 meters, flew four meters above the Alexander Nevsky bridge under construction and splashed down near the Finland railway bridge. The width of the river in this place is about 400 m. Tu-124 remained afloat, however, water began to arrive through the hole in the fuselage. A steam tug that was passing at that moment pulled the plane to the shore. The passengers were evacuated and sent to Tallinn. A crew of seven people: Captain V. Mostovoy, co-pilot V. Chechnev, as well as V. Tsarev, I. Permin, V. Smirnov and flight attendant A. Alexandrova were detained for investigation. Mostovoy was fired, and later awarded the Order of the Red Star, his crew - medals. According to some reports, Mostovoy, after an unsuccessful study at the Academy of Civil Aviation, left for the Krasnodar air squadron. The captain of the tugboat Porshin was awarded a Certificate of Merit and a watch.

Later, a special steamer with a weir began to pump water out of the plane. However, the water from the holes came faster, and, as a result, by the morning the Tu-124 sank. The next day, pontoons were brought under the plane and pulled by a tug to the territory of the current Lenexpo complex, to the Shkipersky channel, where the military unit was based. After it was decided to write off the car due to breakdowns. The cockpit was disconnected and sent as a simulator to the Tambov region, to the Kirsanov aviation school. The fuselage lay on the shore for a long time, then it was cut into scrap metal.

When 35 years later, the participants in those events took part in a television program on Russian television, co-pilot V. Chechnev admitted that the team's "enthusiasm" for repairing the chassis while circling the city led to the fact that the moment was missed when there was still enough fuel to get to the airport.