MOSCOW, December 25 - RIA Novosti, Andrey Kots. December 2016 left another terrible date in the historical calendar of Russia. Exactly one year ago, over the Black Sea, the catastrophe claimed the lives of 92 people. Pilots, our fellow journalists, the famous volunteer doctor Elizaveta Glinka. And 64 military musicians of the Academic Twice Red Banner Song and Dance Ensemble of the Russian Army named after Alexander Alexandrov. On December 25, 2016, the legendary band lost its best soloists, the first line-up. Passengers on a military flight flew to the Khmeimim airbase to wish Happy New Year to Russian soldiers and officers who had been liberating Syria from terrorists for the second year. The causes of the disaster have not been fully elucidated to this day. About the current versions - in the material RIA Novosti.
Old but reliable
Board RA-85572 could hardly be called new. It was built at the Kuibyshev Aviation Plant in 1983. By December 2016, the 33-year-old Tu-154 managed to fly 6689 hours. However, for aircraft of this type, the age limit is 40 years, and the resource is 60,000 flight hours. Over the entire period of operation, it has never seriously broken down, and the last scheduled repair took place in 2014. A few days before the crash, some difficulties arose with the aircraft - airfield services discovered a fuel leak from the wing tank. But the problems were quickly eliminated, the work was accepted by military acceptance. Before departure on December 25, 2016, the aircraft passed all the necessary checks, it was recognized as fully operational and ready for a long flight.
The plane took off after refueling at the Sochi airport at 05:25 Moscow time. The liner was piloted by 35-year-old major Roman Volkov, who had flown more than three thousand hours during his practice. The weather conditions that morning were favorable: visibility was about 10 kilometers, the air temperature was minus five degrees, the height of the lower boundary of the clouds was 1000 meters, and the wind speed did not exceed four meters per second. The aircraft took off from the runway (RWY) at the 37th second after the start of the run, at a speed of 320 kilometers per hour. The crew made two 90-degree turns to starboard and headed east. At 05:27, the Tu-154 disappeared from the radar screens and fell into the sea 1.6 kilometers from the coast and six kilometers from the edge of the runway. The flight lasted only 70 seconds.
Shortly after the tragedy, the military investigative department of the Investigative Committee (IC) for the Sochi garrison opened a criminal case under Article 351 of the Russian Criminal Code - "Violation of flight rules that entailed grave consequences." Later, the case was transferred to the central office of the Investigative Committee. The operational support of the investigation was undertaken by the FSB of Russia. In addition, a commission of the Ministry of Defense headed by Deputy Minister, General of the Army Pavel Popov was created. As Lieutenant-General Sergey Baynetov, head of the aviation safety service of the Armed Forces, said at the end of December, more than 15 versions of the plane crash were initially worked out. Later their number decreased.
Human factor
The first versions of the causes of the crash on the day after the crash were voiced by the FSB of Russia: foreign objects getting into the engine, low-quality fuel, piloting error or a technical malfunction of the aircraft. Representatives of the investigation stressed that the plane did not carry military or dual-use cargo. No signs of sabotage or terrorist attack were found either. In Sochi, only two border guards and a customs officer boarded the plane.
The expert community also voiced several versions, including quite exotic ones. In particular, it was assumed that the Tu-154 could open fire from a portable anti-aircraft missile system, which led to the destruction of the airframe in the air. In addition, experts did not rule out that co-pilot Alexander Rovensky could have made a fatal mistake by mixing up the landing gear and flaps control levers. For this reason, the aircraft could not gain altitude, began to fall and hit the tail of the water.
The Ministry of Defense named the possible cause of the Tu-154 crash over the Black SeaAccording to the accident investigation commission, the plane could have crashed due to the erroneous actions of the crew commander as a result of "violation of spatial orientation."Later, experts studied the issue of the ship's workload. In April, the media reported that the crash could have occurred due to an overload of the liner. Then the journalists claimed that instead of the normative 98 tons, the weight of the aircraft during takeoff allegedly amounted to more than 110 tons. As a result, the Ministry of Defense did not find "violations of the current requirements regarding the seating of passengers in the Tu-154 cabin, as well as loading and centering the transported cargo."
"According to the results of the investigation, it was established that the cause of the accident could be a violation of spatial orientation - the situational awareness of the aircraft commander, which led to his erroneous actions," representatives of the military department voiced their version at the end of May.
Set point early
Earlier, journalists from the Kommersant newspaper came to similar conclusions by publishing their own investigation, supported by comments from informed sources. It was alleged, in particular, that the pilot Roman Volkov began to experience difficulties in determining his location while still on the ground - he could not figure out which of the two lanes he would take off from. According to the publication, the aircraft commander stopped navigating in space immediately after takeoff. Instead of relying on instrument readings, as required by all flight instructions, pilot Volkov began to rely on his own physiological sensations. The vestibular apparatus "informed" him that the car was climbing too fast, so the major began to lower the nose of the plane. This, as Kommersant writes, led to the crash.
However, to put an end to the clarification of the causes of the disaster should investigative committee, which has already extended the timeline of the investigation several times. Last Wednesday, a source familiar with the situation told RIA Novosti that specialists would need a few more months. According to him, the repeated suspensions are due to the need for additional investigative actions and the collection of exhaustive evidence in the criminal case.
“It is quite possible that this is not the last extension of the investigation due to the fact that a complex examination is currently being carried out, which is not possible to complete in a short time,” the source emphasized.
The Russian Ministry of Defense denied the version that the crash of the Tu-154 aircraft in the Black Sea was due to the error of the co-pilot.
Instant: Why didn't the Tu-154 crew get in touch?
"All published rumors about the alleged established reasons the Tu-154 plane crash in Sochi is absolute nonsense and fiction. The Air Crash Investigation Commission continues its work, - said the official representative of the Russian Defense Ministry, Major General Igor Konashenkov. “We consider it unacceptable and immoral to try to unfoundedly accuse someone and invent some conclusions before the completion of the investigation.”
Earlier, the publication Life reported that after the complete decoding of the black boxes, experts called . According to alleged specialists of the Ministry of Defense, the Tu-154 crashed due to the fact that the board went on its last flight overloaded, and co-pilot Alexander Rovensky mixed up the landing gear and flaps control levers on takeoff. When the crew noticed the mistake, it was already too late: the heavy Tu-154 simply did not have enough height for a saving maneuver, so it hit the water with the tail section of the fuselage.
According to Life's source, who is familiar with the investigation into the causes of the disaster, the human factor is recognized as a priority version of the Tu-154 crash. "Studied by the experts of the Research Center for the Operation and Repair of Aircraft of the Ministry of Defense in Lyubertsy, the data of voice and parametric recorders say that in the third minute of the flight, when the liner was at an altitude of 450 meters above sea level, the sensors of the directional stability system worked. The car began to sharply lose altitude from -for problems with the flaps," a source told the publication.
Experts believe that this 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 a prohibitive angle of attack, the crew tried to turn the car around to reach the ground, but did not have time to do this.
It also turned out that the situation was aggravated by the overload of the Tu-154. In the luggage compartment, everything was filled to capacity. The tail of the aircraft pulled down. The tail section of the first touched the water, and then the Tu-154 hit the sea with its right wing at high speed and collapsed.
The site reported that, according to one version, the plane of the Russian Defense Ministry crashed after trying to maneuver to the right. At the same time, his nose was heavily bulged.
“The accident occurred when the pilots were removing the mechanization. At the same time, for unknown reasons, the plane was flying with a large pitch angle. Apparently, it stalled during the maneuver to the right,” a source in law enforcement agencies told TASS. “As a result, at the end of the turn, it collided with the water surface with a left bank at a speed of about 510 km / h. According to experts, the cause of this situation could be a crew error and a problem with one of the engines.
The FSB of Russia also established an eyewitness to the crash of the airliner, according to whom, the crew tried to land. The witness noted that the position of the aircraft in the air seemed strange to him even for landing, as it flew with an unnaturally raised nose, like a motorcycle put on the rear wheel. A moment later, the plane touched the surface of the sea with its tail, which fell off on impact, after which it fell into the water and quickly sank.
The "strange" decrease, which the eyewitness spoke about, could be caused by a desynchronization of the retraction of the wing mechanization. According to the expert, during takeoff and landing, all parts of the wings must move synchronously, and non-synchronous release of the flaps can lead to the death of the liner, experts suggested.
“If passengers are not fully loaded, if there are a significant number of empty seats, it is possible to load the aircraft in such a way and seat the passengers in such a way that the centering will go beyond the permissible limits. This will create problems on takeoff and in flight, and maybe even lead to a stall aircraft into a tailspin.
There were 90 passengers on this board. In Sochi, they could transfer on their own, because there were no guides. Passengers could crowd in the rear seats, and this created a rear centering, which during takeoff, after liftoff, leads to nose up, loss of speed and stalling. Perhaps there was a violation of alignment due to the movement of passengers, "- Alfred Malinovsky, Vice-President of the Union of Airmen of Russia, Honored Worker of Transport.
“Our specialists who investigate flight accidents are among the best in the world, and the conclusions they draw from the results of the investigation are the most accurate. Recall, for example, the same case with the Donetsk plane, when our specialists clearly said what and how True, the world community refused to accept the conclusions of our experts and specialists.
was attracted a large number of specialists, as many as three commissions are working: in Adler, and two in the Moscow region. That is, directly at the Chkalovsky airfield, the forces of the 30th institute are still involved. Previously, it was the head institute of the Air Force, there are also high-class specialists there. And, of course, the research centers that we have in Ramenskoye, the Lyubertsy Center," Alexei Leonkov, a military expert of the Arsenal of the Fatherland magazine and a specialist in the use of military space forces, told Pravda.ru.
Participants in the investigation of the Tu-154 crash over the Black Sea, second by second, restored the circumstances of the crash of the liner. Writes about this "Kommersant".
On the day of the crash, the Tu-154 was supposed to make two training flights to transport troops (passengers), equipment and cargo. The first flight went smoothly, but the second "didn't work out right from the start." According to experts, Tu-154 commander Roman Volkov "began to experience difficulties in determining his location" while still on the ground - while the car was moving along taxiways. Volkov allegedly “could not understand at all” from which of the two runways of the airfield he was to take off and which way was better to taxi to the beginning of this runway.
As a result, the liner took off at 5:24 with a heading of 238 °. Already at the seventh second after takeoff, in the cockpit, according to the participants in the investigation, a special situation arose: “Volkov began emotionally, using profanity, to find out from the crew which course they took off.” The captain lost control over the take-off parameters himself and distracted his colleagues from work, experts say.
Then Volkov set the Tu-154 to the correct pitch of 15°, but almost immediately made the first "illogical" action, deflecting the steering wheel away from him and slowing down the climb. At the 53rd second of the flight, when the Tu-154 climbed only 157 meters, Volkov ordered the flaps to be removed, although according to the regulations this must be done at an altitude of 500 meters. At the same time, he himself continued to deflect the helm away from himself. As a result, the liner at around 231 meters went down.
The aircraft began to quickly (6-8 meters per second) lose altitude, the crew's warnings about a dangerous approach to the ground worked. However, none of the pilots paid any attention to this.
At an altitude of 67 meters, the “Left roll is high” alarm went off, and when 34 meters were left to the water, Volkov turned the steering wheel all the way to the right, trying to correct the mistake, but it was too late. At the 73rd second of the flight, the Tu-154, having touched the surface of the sea with its left wing, fell apart and sank. At the time of the collision, the left bank was about 50 °, and the indicated speed was 540 kilometers per hour.
According to experts, the disaster was accompanied by fatigue and poor professional training of the crew. Captain Volkov lost his orientation in space, having fallen into the power of the so-called somatogravitational illusions. The vestibular apparatus "told" him that the plane was climbing too fast, and the pilot began to lower the nose of the plane.
Tu-154 flying from Sochi to Syria, crashed over the Black Sea on 25 December 2016. There were 92 people on board, all of them died. Among the victims of the crash were the artists of the Alexandrov Ensemble and Elizaveta Glinka (Doctor Lisa).
At the end of May, the Ministry of Defense announced part of the results of the investigation into the Tu-154 crash. The commission rejected versions with low-quality fuel, overload and the impact of external factors. According to the military department, the disaster most likely occurred due to a violation of the spatial orientation of the commander.
On the morning of December 25, immediately after taking off from Adler Airport, a Tu-154 of the Russian Ministry of Defense crashed in the Black Sea. The plane was flying artists of the Alexandrov Song and Dance Ensemble, who were supposed to give a New Year's concert at Russian base Khmeimim in Syria. They were accompanied by film crews of Channel One, NTV and Zvezda. In total, there were 84 passengers and eight crew members on board.
The Tu-154 aircraft (tail number RA-85572) with the artists on board took off from the Chkalovsky airfield near Moscow at 1:38 on the night of December 25. He landed in Sochi for refueling - and at 5:25 Moscow time he took off again. After 2 minutes, the board disappeared from the radar during the climb.
Rescuers found the wreckage of the plane one and a half kilometers from the coast at a depth of 50-70 meters. At the same time, a significant scatter of the debris field is reported: according to an Interfax source, an oil slick and the bodies of the dead were found 6-8 kilometers from the coast, some personal belongings of those on board were found 14 kilometers away.
The causes of the crash are still unknown. Judging by the published recording of negotiations with the controller, the crew did not have any problems before takeoff in Sochi. At the same time, according to Life, the Tu-154 was supposed to refuel in Mozdok, but chose another airfield due to poor weather conditions. The weather in Sochi was good, Roshydromet said. Interfax sources suggested that a critical technical malfunction could have occurred on board, although pilot error is also not ruled out. To date, the "black boxes" (flight recorders) of the Tu-154 have not been found.
President Putin ordered the creation of a state commission to investigate the disaster. The Minister of Transport Maxim Sokolov will head the government commission to investigate the incident. Earlier it was reported that Dmitry Medvedev will lead the commission.
An operational headquarters has been set up in Sochi to receive relatives of the passengers of the crashed Tu-154. The head of the city Anatoly Pakhomov held an emergency meeting of the commission on emergency situations. There is a headquarters at the airport where passengers' relatives will be received. Psychological and psychiatric care teams are already on duty here.
RIA Novosti reports that the bodies of seven dead have been taken aboard the rescue ship.
Monday in the Russian Federation has been declared a national day of mourning for those killed in the Tu-154 plane crash, Russian President Vladimir Putin said.
Passengers
On board was the Aleksandrov Defense Ministry Song and Dance Ensemble: 64 artists flew to the New Year's concert, which was to be held at the Russian Khmeimim base in Syria. Among the dead was the head of the ensemble, chief military conductor of the Russian army Valery Khalilov. They were accompanied by TV journalists from Channel One, NTV and Zvezda, three people in each crew.
The passenger list also includes a well-known civil activist, head of the Fair Aid Foundation, Elizaveta Glinka, also known as Doctor Lisa. She escorted a humanitarian cargo for the Tishrin hospital.
Director of the Department of Culture of the Ministry of Defense Anton Gubankov and his assistant Oksana Batrutdinova were on board the aircraft. Gubankov in 2008 - 2011 headed the Committee on Culture of the Government of St. Petersburg, before that he worked in the Leningrad and St. Petersburg media.
The family of each soldier who died in the Tu-154 crash near Sochi will receive insurance compensation in total more than 5.8 million rubles. This is stated in the message of the Sogaz insurance company, where the liability of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation for causing harm to life, health and property of third parties during operation was insured. aircraft. Insurance Company ready to make payments as soon as possible. “The amount of compensation to the family of each deceased serviceman will total more than 5.8 million rubles, of which 2.3 million rubles. - insurance payment and 3.5 million rubles. - a lump sum,” the insurer said in a statement.
Airplane
The Ministry of Defense reported that the crashed aircraft was released in 1983, the total flight time is 6689 hours. The last overhaul of the board took place in December 2014, it underwent scheduled maintenance in September 2016. The assigned aircraft resource was 37,500 hours or 16,000 landings, while it could be extended to 60,000 hours and 22,000 landings.
Tu-154B-2s have already been withdrawn from commercial operation due to non-compliance with accepted noise standards and high fuel consumption, but military vehicles still remain in service.
Crew
The plane was piloted by "an experienced pilot, pilot first class Roman Volkov." An Izvestia source said that the crew transporting the ensemble to Syria was experienced: “The crew of the aircraft was one of the most experienced at the 800th airbase. They several times on the same board acted as a leader during the flight of the Su-30, Su-35 and Su-24 to Khmeimim.
Song and Dance Ensemble of the Russian Army named after A.V. Alexandrova
The military team, later called the A.V. Aleksandrov Song and Dance Ensemble of the Russian Army, first performed in 1928. It was organized by the teacher of the Moscow Conservatory Alexander Alexandrov.
In 1937, the ensemble, which already consisted of 274 people, received the Grand Prix at the World Exhibition in Paris, having previously traveled to many cities of the Soviet Union and European countries.
During the war, Alexander Alexandrov wrote the songs "Holy War", "Poem about Ukraine", "25 Years of the Red Army" ("Indestructible and Legendary"), which entered the ensemble's repertoire and became famous. The number of the troupe then exceeded 300 people.
After the death of Alexandrov, the ensemble was headed by his son Boris, the ensemble was named after its creator.
Since May 2016, Valery Mikhailovich Khalilov has been the director and artistic director of the ensemble. The staff of the ensemble consists of 186 people. The ensemble's repertoire includes more than 2,000 works, including author's and folk songs and dances, soldier's dances.
Air crash in Adler
According to Lenta.ru, the Adler airport is notorious among pilots. In 2006, the tragedy occurred with the Airbus A320-211 of Armavia, which was flying on the route Yerevan - Sochi. When landing at Sochi airport, the plane crashed into the Black Sea and completely collapsed. All 105 passengers and 8 crew members on board were killed.
Among the victims is Artur Tumasyan, KVN player, screenwriter, one of the authors of the popular Comedy Club show.
In October 1972, an Aeroflot Il-18V crashed near Adler, killing 109 people. It turned out to be impossible to find out the true cause of the disaster, since the wreckage of the liner sank at a depth of about 1000 meters.
After a series of flight accidents, landing from the side of the mountains was prohibited at the Adler airport. air gate accept liners exclusively one hundred sides of the sea. Experts note that pilots had difficulties mainly with landing aircraft, and not with takeoff.
The experts of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation completed a complete decoding of the black boxes and were able to name the final reason, which on December 25, 2016 over the Black Sea. According to experts, in which it happened due to a combination of factors - the plane was overloaded and the co-pilot made a mistake while controlling the aircraft, writes L!FE.
air forceAccording to the source, investigators consider the notorious human factor to be a priority. According to experts, the problem with the flaps, due to which the plane began to lose altitude sharply, was directly related to the error of the co-pilot passenger aircraft, 33-year-old Alexander Rovensky.
“In the third minute of the flight, when the Tu-154 was at an altitude of 450 m above sea level, the sensors of the directional stability system worked. As a result, the car began to lose altitude sharply due to problems with the flaps. I tried to force the car to turn around in order to reach the ground, but I didn’t have time to do it,” said a source familiar with the investigation into the causes of the plane crash in Sochi.
Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation Experts are sure that the reason for the malfunction of the aircraft mechanism was a banal one - when the airliner took off, instead of the landing gear, he pulled the wrong lever and removed the flaps. This is the main version of the causes of the tragedy, in which the members of the Alexandrov Ensemble, the legendary and 9 journalists of Russian TV channels, who flew to Syrian Latakia, died to give a charity concert to the military from the Russian Federation, who were forced into New Year serve in Syria.
Also, the Ministry of Defense adds that the situation was further aggravated by another factor - the overload of the aircraft. In the luggage compartment of the Tu-154, everything was filled to capacity. Therefore, the tail of the liner was pulled down.
air force To save the car, according to experts, it was impossible - there was not enough speed and height. The tail section of the first touched the water, and then the Tu-154 hit the sea with its right wing at high speed and collapsed, which led to the death of all on board. The source points out that emergency situation came as a complete surprise to the crew: in the first seconds, the aircraft commander, 35-year-old Major Roman Volkov, and co-pilot Alexander Rovensky were confused, but quickly pulled themselves together and before last seconds tried to save the plane.
At the same time, experts from the Russian Ministry of Defense consider the announced cause of the crash of the Tu-154 "" premature. Experts emphasize that there is still a huge amount of work to be done to collect and lay out the wreckage of the liner in order to talk about the exact causes of the tragedy.
Recall that the plane crash in Sochi occurred on December 25, 2016. The Tu-154 aircraft of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation at 5:40 am Moscow time, 1.7 km from the coast of Sochi, crashed over the Black Sea. The plane, which was carrying 92 people, flew to the Syrian Khmeimim from the Chkalovsky airfield, and in Sochi it was only refueling. A few minutes after taking off from the runway, the plane disappeared from the radar screens.
