The final conclusions of the commission on the crash of Tu 154. “Is it perhaps collective insanity?”

By official version In the crash of the Tu-154 in Sochi on December 25, 2016, an orangutan was at the controls of the plane instead of a human, and it 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

If we follow the new data, the crew could have gone on the flight unrested. It is possible that even the reflection of stars in the water could disorient the pilots. What do aviation experts say about such versions?

Search and rescue operations at the site of the crash of the Tu-154 aircraft of the Russian Ministry of Defense off the coast of Sochi. Photo: Russian Emergency Situations Ministry/TASS

Updated 13:10

The Tu-154, which crashed in Sochi in December, did not fall into the sea, but tried to land on the water in a controlled flight. As the Kommersant newspaper learned, the technical part of the investigation into the disaster has been completed. The conclusions made by the experts of the military technical commission turned out to be shocking, the publication says.

The pilot's behavior was called strange. The reason for this is now being sought administratively: the Ministry of Defense is studying the medical record of the deceased pilot and the results of his psychological tests, interviewing the instructors who taught the major to fly, and also finding out whether the rest of the crew was properly organized before the flight.

As shown by 3D modeling, the plane took off normally. After takeoff, the crew did not make any of the usual mistakes in such cases. About a minute after taking off from the ground, the Tu-154 gained an altitude of about 250 meters and a speed of about 360-370 kilometers per hour. After this, crew commander Roman Volkov, for an unknown reason, switched the plane to landing mode. The car descended for ten seconds under the control of the pilot, and then hit the water and fell apart.

According to experts, the cause of the tragedy could have been the pilot's disorientation in space. Gaining altitude in the dark, above the sea, the pilot did not visually control the position of the car, since he did not see any landmarks or the horizon ahead. Ignoring the instrument readings, Volkov could trust his physiological sensations. 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. The overload that arose during the acceleration of the machine could give the pilot the illusion of gaining altitude - while in fact the plane was descending.

Experts explain what happened not as Volkov’s mistake, but as a coincidence. As it turned out, the pilots were tired because they had to land in Adler instead of Mozdok and fly at night, although the flight was planned in the daytime.

The military is trying to figure out what caused the crew commander's stress. According to the publication, specialists seized all his documents and the results of psychological tests from medical institutions. The Tu-154 pilots may have incorrectly correlated personal sensations of the aircraft’s position with instrument readings, a source told Interfax. familiar with the situation. “They encountered the so-called phenomenon of somatogravitational illusion,” the interlocutor explained.

In turn, the commander of the Yak-40 and An-26, pilot-instructor Evgeny Samsonov believes that the pilots of the Ministry of Defense could hardly have made such a mistake.

Evgeny Samsonov instructor pilot “This can only happen to pilots who are just starting to learn to fly. Well, let's say in the first 30 minutes, in the first hour of instrument flights, after five hours of instrument flights, and after ten hours of instrument flights, when the pilot starts flying, it all goes away for him. A person gets used to looking at instruments and trusting his feelings only to them, but he simply does not notice his feelings. This can only happen if the pilot is poorly trained or during long breaks in flights. Hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of pilots fly every day. In the entire history of this same Adler in Sochi, no one has ever had any illusions. They fly during the day and at night, in fog and in bad weather. The pilot flies using instruments. Even though he had fifteen hundred hours of flight time on this one, before he also flew using instruments. I don't think he was distracted or anything. He could have been distracted for some other reason, but watching and piloting a plane by the stars is not.”

According to preliminary data, as a result of a similar phenomenon - loss of orientation in flight - it crashed. Honored Pilot of the USSR, Chairman of the Commission on civil aviation public council Rostransnadzor Oleg Smirnov believes that any pilot can encounter such a problem in flight:

Oleg Smirnov Chairman of the Civil Aviation Commission of the Public Council of Rostransnadzor“Loss of spatial orientation in flight is a fairly common cause of air accidents in the world throughout the history of aviation. When, let’s say, I took off for the first time in Sochi at 2 o’clock in the morning on a large Il-18 plane and suddenly noticed that my brain was protesting something: beautiful, clear weather - and it protested because it suddenly saw that the stars were above, and below you. This is the nuance that you should never fall for. This leads to loss of spatial orientation. There is only one way out of the situation - strict instrument piloting. This illusion occurs for any pilot who falls into it. The commission will very quickly line up this line of who was behind the crew that did not rest, very quickly. Moreover, the row is family-specific, specific, position-specific: whoever did not give the opportunity planned the flight in such a way that the crew flew without rest with such a responsible composition of passengers.”

The Ministry of Defense itself rejects the version of a possible crew error. All department reports repeatedly spoke about the experience and impeccable track record of the members of the crashed crew.

The investigation into the Tu-154 crash over the Black Sea continues, it has not yet come to definite conclusions. Deputy Prosecutor General Sergei Fridinsky told reporters about this. He called the versions published in the media “rather guesswork.”

In the Black Sea, the main stage of the search operation at the site of the Tu-154 plane crash near Sochi, which killed 92 people, has ended. Representatives of the Ministry of Defense told reporters about the first results of the work of the commission to investigate the circumstances of the tragedy, the main ones are in the RBC review

Lifting the found fragment of the Tu-154 aircraft, castaway over the Black Sea off the coast of Sochi (Photo: RF Ministry of Emergency Situations/RIA Novosti)

A Tu-154 Ministry of Defense plane taking off from Adler crashed on the morning of December 25. The airliner disappeared from radar screens in the second minute of the flight and fell into the Black Sea near Sochi. The aircraft was heading to Syria, with 92 people on board: military personnel, artists of the Alexandrov Ensemble, journalists, and the head of the Fair Aid Foundation, Elizaveta Glinka.

Search operation

• The main stage of the search operation at the crash site. Rescuers brought to the surface all the main fragments of the crashed aircraft, the fragments were delivered to a special site in Sochi.
• Rescuers brought 19 bodies of the dead to the surface. 17 of them and all fragments of the bodies have already been delivered on a special flight to Moscow for identification. The body of only one crash victim has been identified and buried; for all others, we must wait for the results of a genetic examination.
• During the search work, two “black boxes” were found. The first of them was discovered on the morning of December 27, the second - the next day. They were in good condition. The third flight recorder, located in the tail of the Tu-154, was destroyed.
• Large fragments of the Tu-154 were discovered by space monitoring; a photograph of the crash area was published by the Space Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

Investigation

• Three teams have been created to investigate the incident. “One works directly at Adler airport, the second at the 30th Research Institute, the third group of the flight safety service works at the 800th aviation base,” said Lieutenant General Sergei Baynetov, head of the aviation safety service of the Russian Armed Forces.
• The pilots' actions during the Tu-154 crash will be simulated using simulators.
• Preliminary data from the examinations will become known in January, and final conclusions about the causes of the disaster will be made after decoding the flight recorders.

Conclusions of the investigation and versions of the crash

• The commission to investigate the Tu-154 crash over the Black Sea initially considered more than 15 versions of the disaster, now there are half as many.
• The last flight of the crashed Tu-154 lasted about 70 seconds. maximum height was about 250 m at a speed of 360-370 km/h.
• The plane crash was not caused by an explosion on board, but the Ministry of Defense has not completely ruled out the possibility of a terrorist attack on board the plane. “A terrorist attack is not necessarily an explosion; it could also be a mechanical impact. This version is also being considered by the commission,” said Sergei Baynetov, head of the aviation safety service of the Russian Armed Forces.
• The head of the Ministry of Transport of the Russian Federation, Maxim Sokolov, said that a terrorist attack is not considered as the main version in the investigation of the plane crash.
• According to Sokolov, the Tu-154’s onboard equipment was operating abnormally. “Experts will have to find out what caused this, and why a special technical commission has been created,” he said.
• It is known that in Sochi, where the Tu-154 landed for refueling, only representatives of the border service boarded it, and all passengers boarded the plane at Chkalovsky airport, near Moscow.
• One of the phrases uttered by the commander of the crashed Tu-154 was about the beginning of the development of a “special situation on board.” “Everything was quite standard, but the commander’s phrase, one, analysis of this phrase speaks of the beginning of a special situation, the beginning of the development of this situation. So far she hasn’t told us anything else,” Baynetov said. According to him, the “special situation on board” developed for about 10 seconds.
• A preliminary analysis of the first discovered flight recorder showed that the priority version of the Tu-154 crash was a pilot error. Earlier, a source close to the investigation told Kommersant that the recorder recorded a failure of the flap retraction system, which provides additional lift on the aircraft’s wings during takeoff.

The fate of the Tu-154

• Flights of Tu-154 aircraft in the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation have been suspended pending the initial conclusions of the commission investigating the circumstances of the disaster.
• The operation of Tu-154B-2 aircraft will continue, said Sergei Baynetov, head of the flight safety service of the Russian Armed Forces. “I think that even after the incident the planes will be in service,” he said.

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, an 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 passengers economy class 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.