What's new in the crash of Tu 154. Humanitarian assistance during military conflicts
Daria Kobylkina, Elena Kostyuchenko
The crash of the Tu-154, which occurred on December 25, became the most terrible plane crash last year. And the most secret of all last years. Almost four months later, we are forced to admit that the public has virtually no reliable information about what happened. The Ministry of Defense has completely taken over the investigation of the crash, although the flight took place from a civilian airport and the dead included not only military personnel. Air crash investigations are never quick, but in the three and a half months since the crash we have received much more information, including such high-profile cases as the crash Russian airliner over Sinai as a result of a terrorist attack and even the destruction of a Malaysian Boeing over Donbass.
Instead of objective data, the public is offered versions that are published by the media with reference to sources close to the investigation. Since it is impossible to verify them now, these versions can be used to trace the position of the military investigation, formulated specifically for “external use” - that is, for us.
It is known that on December 25, 2016, a Tu-154B-2 airliner belonging to the Russian Air Force was flying on the Moscow-Latakia route. The plane took off from Moscow at 1.38 am on December 25 from the Chkalovsky military airfield, delayed for several hours. The plane was supposed to refuel in Mozdok, but due to bad conditions weather conditions was sent to Sochi. We refueled and the border guards came on board to check for foreign passports. At 5.25 the plane took off from Sochi airport and disappeared from radar at 5.27. There was no distress signal. Subsequently, the Ministry of Defense will announce that the plane crashed into the Black Sea 70 seconds after takeoff from Sochi airport.
All 92 people on board died - 84 passengers and 8 crew members. Among them are artists of the Alexandrov Choir, journalists from NTV, Channel One, the Zvezda TV channel, and the head of the Fair Aid Foundation Elizaveta Glinka (Doctor Lisa). The Russian FSB officially reported that “according to the Ministry of Defense, there were 84 passengers and eight crew members, passenger luggage and 150 kg of cargo (food and medicine) on board the plane.” “The said aircraft did not transport military or dual-use cargo or pyrotechnics,” the FSB TsOS stated.
In the first hours after the disaster, the military investigative department of the Investigative Committee Russian Federation In the Sochi garrison, a criminal case was opened under Article 351 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (“Violation of flight rules resulting in grave consequences”). Later, the case was transferred to the central office of the Investigative Committee of Russia. The FSB is providing operational support for the investigation. Despite the fact that the case is officially being handled by the Russian Investigative Committee, in fact, a commission of the Russian Ministry of Defense headed by Deputy Minister of Defense General of the Army Pavel Popov is in charge of establishing the causes of the military aircraft crash. I can say that the search for bodies and fragments of the plane, carried out by the forces of the Ministry of Emergency Situations, also took place under the close control of the Ministry of Defense - as well as work with the relatives of the victims. The technical part of the investigation and analysis of the wreckage is being carried out by employees of the Research Center for the Operation and Repair of Aircraft Equipment of the Ministry of Defense. Civilian specialists, including employees of the Interstate Aviation Committee (IAC), which investigates all plane crashes in the world, were involved in a limited and forced manner - at the end of January there were reports that the investigation encountered difficulties in deciphering and analyzing data from flight recorders. This is due to the fact that on castaway Tu-154 was equipped with recorders that look like a reel-to-reel tape recorder, and the Ministry of Defense does not have the appropriate specialists to decipher them. IAC stated that one of the specialists is taking part in the investigation, but IAC does not have the right to comment on the Tu-154 crash. The RF IC also does not have the right to comment on the progress of the investigation and does not have operational information on the case.
In such conditions, it is difficult to guarantee the reliability and impartiality of the investigation’s conclusions. We ask readers to take a critical look at the facts presented in the material.
As Lieutenant General Sergei Baynetov, a member of the state commission and head of the aviation safety service of the Armed Forces, reported at the end of December, initially there were more than 15 versions of the Tu-154 crash, then their number was halved.
What was excluded?
Just four hours after the disaster (the search for debris and bodies had just begun), Chairman of the Federation Council Committee on Defense and Security Viktor Ozerov publicly ruled out a terrorist attack: “I completely rule out the version of a terrorist attack. Aircraft of the Ministry of Defense, air space Russia, there cannot be such a version here.” However, the investigation continued to consider the likelihood of a terrorist attack, sabotage, and even a missile hit until mid-January 2017. Now, according to Novaya, the possibility of an explosion or any external influence on the plane is absolutely excluded.
Already in the first hours after the disaster, the possibility of low-quality fuel was practically ruled out - simultaneously with the crashed plane, other aircraft were refueling at the airport, which took off and arrived without any problems. Airport employees told Novaya that control over fuel here is “strong”: “Our president refuels here, you understand.” At the same time, the FSB, which provided operational support for the investigation, considered the possibility of foreign objects getting into the engine.
A serious technical malfunction of the aircraft - failure of one or more engines - has also now been ruled out.
Overload was also cited as a possible cause of problems with climb. The fact of overload is denied by the Ministry of Defense.
Priority versions
From the first day of the disaster, two priority versions were identified - a technical malfunction and a pilot error.
On December 27, almost simultaneously, information appeared about the decoding of the “black boxes” - speech and parametric. Life published the crew's conversations.
...Speed 300... (Unintelligible.)
- (Inaudible.)
— I took the racks, commander.
- (Inaudible.)
- Wow, oh my!
(A sharp signal sounds.)
- Flaps, bitch, what the f***!
- Altimeter!
- We... (Inaudible.)
(A signal sounds about dangerous proximity to the ground.)
- (Inaudible.)
- Commander, we are falling!
At the same time, according to information provided to Novaya Gazeta by the Emergency Situations Ministry employees who led and carried out the search, at the time of publication of the transcript, the voice recorder had not been recovered from the sea. The decryption never received official confirmation. On December 29, the head of the Aviation Flight Safety Service of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, Lieutenant General Sergei Baynetov, said that, judging by radio traffic data, there was a “special situation” on board for 10 seconds - without further clarification.
According to Life's source, the second recorder, a parametric one, has not yet been delivered to the Central Research Institute of the Air Force, and it is not yet known when decoding will begin.
On the same day, information appeared in Kommersant that the raised and deciphered parametric recorder registered a failure to retract the flaps - that is, a technical malfunction. A source close to the investigation develops a version: the pilots tried to compensate for the diving moment that appeared when the flaps were not retracted with the steering wheel and passed a supercritical angle of attack, after which the air stopped holding the plane - and the fall became inevitable.
The assumption that the flaps did not work was put forward even before the recorder was deciphered - based on the testimony of an unnamed witness, an FSB coast guard officer, who compared the position of the plane at the moment it touched the water with a motorcycle moving on its rear wheel.
On February 7, the Kommersant newspaper reported the creation of a mathematical model of the last flight of the Tu-154, which included the flight path of the airliner and the operating parameters of all its systems, including engine mode and rudder positions, obtained from the flight recorder. According to reports from the same Kommersant on March 14, 2017, the technical part of the investigation into the disaster has now been completed. The results are described as "shocking". From the experts' conclusions it follows that the plane did not fall, but crashed while landing on water in a controlled flight. Instead of continuing to climb, managing pilot Roman Volkov, for unknown reasons, began descending. The source suggests that the pilot was disoriented in space: “Gaining altitude in the dark, above the sea, the pilot did not visually control his position, since he did not see any landmarks ahead or even the horizon. Even the stars, which were both above and below at the same time - in the form of reflections on the surface of the water - could disorient the crew. In this difficult situation, the pilot, according to experts, had to completely trust the instruments, the readings of which commander Volkov apparently ignored, trusting his experience and physiological sensations. So, for example, the overload that arose during the acceleration of the machine could create for the pilot the illusion of gaining altitude, while in fact the plane was descending.”
It is separately noted that the investigation team of the Ministry of Defense is now studying the entire professional biography of the deceased pilot, flight training, medical card, the results of psychological tests, as well as the pilot’s rest regime. Failure to retract flaps are no longer mentioned.
Loss of spatial orientation has already been mentioned as the cause of the disaster. On April 2, 2016, a Eurocopter EC-130B helicopter made a hard landing in the village of Bezverkhovo, Primorsky Territory, resulting in the death of the pilot. The Interstate Aviation Committee (IAC) mentions bad weather, loss of visibility of landmarks and the natural horizon line. On March 19, 2016, a Boeing 737-800 flying from Sharm el-Sheikh crashed while landing at Rostov-on-Don airport. 62 people died. The reason is again cited as the loss of orientation of the crew in difficult weather conditions, which could have been contributed to by the non-standard display of the main flight instrument for Russia. However, it is known that the weather conditions at the time of departure of the Tu-154 were close to ideal, and Roman Volkov had more than 1,900 hours of flight time on the Tu-154, equipped to all standards.
Elena Kostyuchenko
Experts' opinions
Vadim Lukashevich,
independent aviation expert, candidate of technical sciences
— New data in the investigation of the Tu-154 crash in Sochi is, excuse me, bullshit. They do not bring us any closer to understanding the causes of the tragedy. If this was the first data about the disaster and there was no information before that, it could be called a premature version. And so a lot of questions arise.
First: what position were the plane's flaps in? Even if the pilot lost his orientation, did not care about the instruments, trusted his feelings, he could not forget that he was actually taking off, and the flaps should have been retracted long ago, and not be in a half-opened state at the moment of impact. Second: the pilot, like the passengers on the plane, must understand in their feelings whether the plane is gaining altitude or losing altitude. After all, in the first minutes of the flight the altitude climb is the most intense. Third: if the plane did not approach supercritical angles of attack, then how can we explain the words of eyewitnesses who saw the plane flying with its nose raised very high? Is this situation really called “absolutely normal mode”?
Judging by the results of the technical investigation, the plane was descending normally. Between the lines we read that he extended the flaps, but did not retract them (unless, of course, we return to the story with the flaps not initially retracted). That is, for some reason the pilot moved the car into the landing position. In this case, talking about the pilot’s disorientation is simply not serious.
I am also confused by the description of the disorientation of the pilots due to the stars reflected in the sea. The sea near the surf line is not a perfectly flat surface of a pond or puddle. It's quite difficult to see the moon there. I can’t help but feel that these new investigation data are nothing more than testing the waters with a view to identifying the plane pilots as the culprits of the tragedy. At first they told us about the pilot’s 3,000 hours of flight time and experience, and now they are studying his medical record and the teachers who taught him to fly. It was Volkov's military crew that transported the cosmonauts to Baikonur. Such tasks are not trusted to just anyone.
Andrey Krasnoperov,
Air Force major, pilot
- I judge by facts. The last radio exchange between the pilots sounded like this: “Stand up! Racks! Flaps! Commander, we are falling." What kind of landing could there be here? 70 seconds from takeoff, about 50 seconds off the ground. Obviously, a mistake was made - the flaps were removed instead of the landing gear. The plane reached a supercritical angle of attack, speed 360, without flaps and landing gear extended, it simply fell on its tail. How could you prepare for landing? Let go of the steering wheel, let the plane accelerate, and do not take it to these angles; pilots have a special device for this. And then... The right pilot confused the landing gear with the flaps, and the second one did not appreciate it, did not understand what happened to the plane, continuing to take off at a normal angle.
As a pilot, I could support the theory that the pilots wanted to land the plane. And they could have done this if those same banal mistakes had not been made. At the moment they were discovered, it was no longer possible to change the situation. Our pilots do not know how to control a ship at supercritical angles of attack, only testers. I don’t want to blame the pilots, they fought to the last, believe me, none of us are kamikazes and don’t want to die. They took off to Sochi at five in the morning, before that there was an overnight flight from Moscow, given the fatigue and workload, they could have mixed something up.
Yuri Sytnik,
Honored Pilot of Russia
— It is premature to talk about the final version of the crash. And discussing information leaks or speculation and rumors is not entirely correct in relation to the relatives of the victims, including the Tu-154 pilots. I don't believe the pilots intended to land on water. They simply controlled the plane until the last moment, before colliding with the water surface. The crew was able to control the ship, they did not lose their functionality, they realized the criticality of the situation and tried to get the plane out of it. This is not a landing. This is a controlled plane crash.
Why did they have to land in the sea? The engines were working, and so were the instruments. If there is an emergency situation, they could land at the airfield, and if there were no problems, then calmly continue the flight. It was possible to talk about versions - that the engine failed, they collided with birds, the flaps were not removed, they were confused with the landing gear, they lost control - at the initial stage, until evidence was discovered. Now the parametric media and flight recorders have been deciphered; it is enough to wait a month or a month and a half to have all the information about what happened on board.
Igor Deldyuzhov,
President of the Sheremetyevo Union of Flight Personnel
— Loss of orientation in space is a common occurrence. And it occurs mainly in tired pilots. According to the International Organization civil aviation, crew fatigue is a contributing cause in 30% of disasters. This may also have something to do with this story. At about six o'clock in the morning they took off from Sochi, arriving there at about 4 o'clock, from Chkalovsky they could leave at half past one, and from midnight prepare for departure. What did they do during the day? Before departure, they could well have been busy at work instead of resting. In general, this planned night flight is incomprehensible to me. Civil aviation aircraft, such as Aeroflot, often fly at night, but this is due to scheduling issues and reduced time on the ground. Why did the military board need the rush?
Judging by the latest published data, the pilot was guided by “his experience and physiological sensations.” This is strange for me, because the crew was flying not during the day, but at night, when the piloting is carried out using instruments that record pitch, vertical speed of climb or descent, roll... This is all guesswork - in order to say anything concrete, you need to wait until the end of the investigation. And so one can assume a lot. For example, one of the pilots could lose consciousness, and the second could not detect it in time. Or the crew's interaction could be disrupted in some other way. At Aeroflot, such moments are practiced on simulators. Do they teach this in the army? Don't know. In addition, I am interested in the chain of command. In civil aviation, the co-pilot is a full member of the crew who has the right to vote and influence decision-making. How is it going with the military? Can a junior in rank make comments to a senior?
Recorded by Daria Kobylkina
After a complete decoding of the black boxes of the Tu-154 that crashed at the end of December 2016 in the waters of Sochi - parametric and speech- Experts from the Ministry of Defense can actually accurately name the causes of the plane crash.According to experts, the plane with its passengers was destroyed by a combination of several factors:went on the last flight overloaded, and the co-pilot Alexander Rovensky on takeoff, perhapsmixed up the landing gear and flap control levers. When the crew noticed the mistake, it was already too late: the heavy Tu-154 simply did not have enough altitude for a rescue maneuver, so itThe tail part of the fuselage hit the water and collapsed.
Heavy and unmanageable
A Life source familiar with the investigation into the causes of the disaster said that the notorious human factor was recognized as the priority version of the Tu-154 crash.
Data from speech and parametric (recording the operation of all aircraft components) recorders studied by experts from the Research Center for Operation and Repair of Aircraft of the Ministry of Defense in Lyubertsy say that in the third minute of the flight, when the airliner was at an altitude of 450 meters above sea level, the directional stability system sensors were activated, - a source told Life. - The car began to sharply lose altitude due to problems with the flaps.
According to experts, this could have 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 an extreme angle of attack, the crew tried to turn the plane to reach the ground, but did not have time to do this, the Life source added.
As it turned out, the situation was aggravated by the overload of the Tu-154. IN luggage compartment everything was filled to capacity. The tail section of the plane was pulled down. It was impossible to save the car: there was not enough speed and height.The tail section touched the water first, and then the Tu-154at high speedhit the sea with its right wing and collapsed.
According to Life’s source, the emergency situation came as a complete surprise to the crew: in the first seconds, the plane’s commander, 35-year-old Major Roman Volkov, and co-pilot Alexander Rovensky were confused, but quickly pulled themselves together and tried to save the plane until the last seconds.
DECODING:
Speed 300... (Unintelligible.)
- (Unintelligible.)
I took the racks, commander.
- (Unintelligible.)
Wow, oh my!
(A sharp signal sounds.)
Flaps, bitch, what the fuck!
Altimeter!
Us... (Unintelligible.)
(A signal sounds about a dangerous approach to the ground.)
- (Unintelligible.)
Commander, we are falling!
This is how the experts realized that the plane had problems with the flaps due to the fault of the crew.
The pilots who flew the Tu-154, with whom Life spoke, confirm the conclusions of experts from the Ministry of Defense that the cause of the disaster could have been pilot error.
On the Tupolev, the landing gear and flap retraction handles are located on the visor of the pilot's cabin, between them, above the windshield. You can confuse them, especially if the co-pilot sitting on the right, whose responsibilities include controlling the flaps and landing gear during takeoff, is tired,” Honored Pilot of the Russian Federation Viktor Sazhenin, who himself flew on the Tu-154 for eight years, told Life. - Because of this, the plane went into an extreme angle of attack, hit the water, and its tail fell off.
This version is also considered acceptable by test pilot Hero of Russia Magomed Tolboev.
On the Tu-154 control panel, the flap and landing gear toggle switches are located above the windshield. The flaps are on the left, the landing gear is on the right. The co-pilot, who sits in the seat on the right, is responsible for them. It is possible that the pilot could have mixed up the levers or been distracted by something, so the plane took off with the landing gear extended and the flaps retracted,” Tolboev told Life.
According to Tolboev, one cannot exclude the possibility that after takeoff the crew exceeded the speed and the flap mechanism collapsed, causing the plane to fall to the right, lose speed and crash into the water.
Tragic experience
Another factor in the Tu-154 disaster in Sochi could have been the lack of sufficient knowledge among the ship’s commander and co-pilot on how to act in an extreme situation.
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The crash with the Tu-154 B-2 with tail number RA-85572 of the Ministry of Defense occurred on December 25, 2016. It was at 5:40 am Moscow time, 1.7 kilometers from the coast of Sochi. The Ministry of Defense plane was flying to Syrian Khmeimim from the Chkalovsky airfield, and in Sochi it was just refueling. There were 92 people on board the liner. A few minutes after lifting off from the runway, the plane disappeared from radar screens.
The crashed airliner was based at the Chkalovsky airfield near Moscow and was part of the Federal State Budgetary Institution "State Airline 223rd Flight Detachment" of the Ministry of Defense, which transports military personnel.
The Tu-154 B-2 modification is designed to carry 180 economy class passengers and was produced from 1978 to 1986. A total of 382 aircraft were built. Since 2012 civil airlines Russia does not operate the Tu-154 B-2.
Last week, the Russian Ministry of Defense reported the official version of the crash of the Tu-154 plane over the Black Sea.
So: “Erroneous actions of the crew” are named as the cause of the Tu-154 crash over the Black Sea, which occurred on December 25, 2016. RIA Novosti, citing the Ministry of Defense, reported: “Based on the results of the investigation, it was established that the cause of the incident could have been a violation of the spatial orientation (situational awareness) of the aircraft commander, which led to his erroneous actions with the aircraft controls.”
However, many experts still do not believe in the correctness of the investigation results and insist on their versions of what happened. Independent technical expert Yuri Antipov criticized the official version of the Ministry of Defense about the crash of the Tu-154 plane in Sochi.
He said that the Ministry of Defense chose the most harmless version of the plane crash, guided by the principle “it will be better for everyone.” The remaining versions, in his opinion, were discarded in the first hours after the disaster. For example, an explosion on board. It couldn't exist because it couldn't exist. No particles of the substance were found on the wreckage. However, Antipov recalls that at that time very few remains of the car were recovered from the water.
Inconsistency on inconsistency
Experienced military pilots with whom the publication spoke agree that this document, as well as the official message from the Ministry of Defense, contains a lot of inconsistencies. Experts draw attention to the fact that at Sochi airport planes taxi to the runway following an escort vehicle. Among other things, the airport is equipped with illuminated taxiway and runway number indicators. It is simply impossible to get lost here. Moreover, if it became known that Major Volkov was lost on the ground, this should have been immediately followed by a ban on takeoff. But what, according to official version, happened after takeoff, defies any explanation at all. “Unless the entire crew suffered some kind of collective insanity,” said one of the experts interviewed... +
Yes, that there are military experts, even those who simply think logically and watch more than just TV, can understand the real state of affairs in this whole story.
Let's begin by presenting our version of what happened.
TU-154: Ritual sacrifice of the goyim on Hanukkah!
This is the name of the video published by Korban TV on the YouTube channel Rus Politics. You can doubt the authorship as much as you like while wearing rose-colored glasses. Apparently, the author of this video could even be accused of anti-Semitism, if not for one “but”. Behind the author of the video are real people, Zionists. So.
“Dear Zionist brothers! This year according to the Jewish calendar 5777 is ending wonderfully for us. After the ritual sacrifice of the goyim on Hanukkah in the form of the destruction of an entire Tu-154 plane, our God gives us a lot of prosperity and benefits in the New Year. Only the goyim were put on the plane, but everyone The rabbinate managed to dissuade respected Jews from this flight...
So brothers, rejoice, we, as always, have everything covered. Happy Hanukkah to you and don’t forget to get the goyim drunk in high gear at New Year so that vodka poisons these worms. Glory to Zion."
From the comments:
Hawthorn poisoning for the same (celebration)?
According to the official version of the Tu-154 crash in Sochi on December 25, 2016, an orangutan turned out to be at the controls of the plane instead of a human, and began to jerk the control sticks absurdly, which led to the tragedy. If we draw a parallel with driving a car, it would look like this: the driver got behind the wheel, drove off, and drove into a snowdrift. I backed out and crushed three cars nearby. Then he drove forward and crashed as hard as he could into a garbage container, which is where the trip ended.
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 inexplicable actions by 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. Then the rise occurred at a speed of 10 meters per second - instead of the usual 12–15 m/s.
And 2 seconds after lifting off the ground, the ship’s commander, Roman Volkov, pulled the steering wheel towards himself in order to increase the take-off angle. The fact is that the take-off and landing trajectories are strictly defined at each airfield: landing takes place on a flatter path, take-off - on a steeper one. This is necessary to separate the planes taking off and landing in height - without which they would constantly be in danger of colliding in the air.
But an increase in the angle of climb led to a drop in speed - the aircraft was too heavy and refused to perform this maneuver. Then the pilot, probably already realizing that he had been given some kind of pig in the form of an extra load, gave the helm away from himself in order to stop the climb and thereby gain speed.
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 retracting the flaps ahead of schedule 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 manage to 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.
First: what kind of cargo was placed in the belly of this Tu - and by whom?
It is clear that these were not light drugs from Dr. Lisa, who was on this flight, and not an armored personnel carrier: a passenger plane does not have a wide port for entry of any equipment. This cargo was apparently heavy and compact enough to enter through the cargo hatch.
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 other 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.
In short, in Chkalovsky the plane is overloaded, but this overload is compensated for by incomplete refueling - and in Adler the tanks are already filled to capacity. Obviously, the calculation was to fly to Syrian Khmeimim (destination) and back on our own fuel. And the fact that the ship’s commander agreed in Adler to these 35.6 tons of fuel speaks in favor of the fact that he still did not know the real magnitude of the overload. If he were to fly alone, he could still indulge in the dashing daring that Chkalov himself initiated in our aviation. But behind Volkov there was his own crew of 7 people, and another 84 passengers, including artists from the Alexandrov ensemble!
The fact that the Ministry of Defense in this matter is not just obfuscating, but completely hiding the truth is evidenced by such facts.
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?
Well, I very much doubt that they would hide her from Putin: he doesn’t look like a person who can be fooled around his finger. This means they are hiding from the people. This means that this truth is such that it somehow terribly undermines the prestige of our military.
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.
Alexander Roslyakov
