A passenger plane crashed in the Indian Ocean. Airbus A310-300 of Yemenia Airways, flying from Sanaa to the capital of the Comoros, fell into the water off the coast northern island Comorian archipelago. The fate of the 150 people on board is still unknown.
An Airbus A310-300 passenger plane crashed near the Comoros, located in the Mozambique Strait of the Indian Ocean. According to Reuters, Yemenia Airlines, which owned the plane, was making connecting flight. On Monday at 08:55 Yemeni time (09:55 Moscow time), an Airbus A330-200 owned by the company took off on flight IY749 from Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport to the airport in the Yemeni capital Sana'a with an intermediate landing in Marseille. Having reached Sana at 19.50 Moscow time, the agency reports, the passengers of the A330-200 transferred to the A310-300 and at 21.30 Moscow time took flight IY626 to the Comoros. They were supposed to arrive at Moroni airport at 03.15 Moscow time.
However, an hour before the scheduled landing, the Airbus disappeared from the radar.
According to an unnamed employee of the local airport, quoted by Reuters, the pilot of the liner managed to tell the dispatchers that he would soon be landing, and then contact with him was lost.
Soon, official representatives of the authorities of the Comoros reported that the liner had crashed into Indian Ocean. According to the Qatari TV channel Al-Jazeera, the plane crashed off the coast of the northern island of the Comoros archipelago - Ngazidzha. So far, representatives of local authorities cannot name the exact place of the fall. According to the Agency for aviation security and navigation in Africa and Madagascar (ASECNA), rescuers have already gone to the alleged site of the tragedy. Nothing is known about the fate of the passengers of the liner. "Most likely, the plane is somewhere 8 kilometers from the coast. Civilian and military vessels have already set off in search," ASECNA spokesman Ibrahim Kassim was quoted by CNN as saying.
A headquarters has already been set up in Paris to help the relatives of passengers flying on Yemenia Airways. As reported on the website of the airline itself, its representatives do not intend to communicate with the press. Data on the number of passengers vary. So, AFP reports 147 passengers.
According to the Sky News channel, there were 11 crew members and 142 passengers on board the liner. The same figures are given on the official website of Yemenia Airways. It is only known for certain that the majority of those on board the liner were citizens of the Comoros and the French.
At about 10.30 Moscow time, rescuers found the wreckage of the plane and the bodies of two passengers.
This is the fourth incident for Yemenia Airways. From 2001 to 2006, not a single person was injured in accidents involving the company's aircraft. Yemenia Airways is 51% owned by the government of Yemen and 49% owned by the government Saudi Arabia. The park air transport The company consists of two Airbus A330-200s, four Airbus 310-300s and four Boeing 737-800s.
What is Airbus A310
The Airbus A310 is a small, wide-body, medium-long-haul passenger aircraft. It is one of the smallest wide-body aircraft in the world. In mid-1975, the designers of the Airbus Industry consortium began the preliminary development of the project passenger aircraft A300B10, which was a variant of the A300B4 with a shortened fuselage. At the same time, the development of the A310-200 liner with a flight range of more than 5 thousand kilometers began.
The first flight of the prototype A310-200 took place on April 3, 1982. Regular operation of the aircraft began the following year. In March 1983, designers from Airbus Industry began developing the A310-300 for long haul airlines. The main difference from the previous model was the presence of an additional fuel tank with a capacity of more than 6 thousand liters. in the horizontal tail and the use of an automated fuel transfer system to maintain the optimal balance of the aircraft in flight.
In 1985, the A310-300 entered regular service. Since 1991, the aircraft has been certified by the Aviaregistry of the Russian Federation, as a result of which it received the right to operate in Russian airlines. At various times, the A310 was operated by Aeroflot and Transaero. Currently, this type of aircraft is used only by S7 Airlines, which operates seven A310s.
The total number of A310 aircraft delivered to Airbus by 2008 is 255, of which 220 aircraft are in operation with 39 airlines. To date, all A310s in service have completed over four million flights with a total duration of about 10.5 million flight hours. Officially, the production of the A310 was completed in 2007.
Airbus A310 accidents
In July 1992, an Airbus A310 owned by a Thai airline veered off course due to a miscommunication between the pilot and the controller and crashed near Kathmandu. All 113 people on board were killed.
In March 1994, the pilot of an A310 en route from Moscow to Hong Kong put his 16-year-old son at the helm, who accidentally turned off the autopilot. The plane went into a tailspin and crashed near Mezhdurechensk. All 75 people on the ship were killed.
In March 1995, in Romania, an A310 pilot lost control of the car, forgetting that he had turned off the autopilot. The plane crashed near the Romanian city of Balotesti. 60 people died.
In November 1998, another A310 crashed while landing at an airport in Thailand due to adverse weather conditions. Killed 101 of the 146 people on board.
In January, another liner of this model fell into the sea near Abidjan. The accident occurred shortly after takeoff due to crew error. 169 of the 179 people aboard the A310 were killed.
There were no casualties during the emergency involving the A310 in Austria in December 2000. The landing gear jammed at the car, and the pilots made forced landing in a field near locality Schwechat.
In July 2007, when landing in Irkutsk, the A310 engine went into takeoff mode, which caused the liner to crash to the ground. 125 out of 203 people died.
Another incident was recorded in June 2006. An A310 landing in Khartoum crashed and caught fire. 30 of the 214 people on board were killed.
The Commission has established the following:By the beginning of the playback of the magnetic recording of the conversations in the cockpit (17:26:52), the reserve PIC was in the left pilot's seat, and the co-pilot was in the right pilot's seat. The aircraft commander was resting in the passenger cabin.
From 17:40, the PIC-passenger and the children of the reserve PIC were in the cockpit. At 17:43:31, the reserve PIC left his workplace without transferring control of the aircraft to the co-pilot, which was then alternately occupied first by his daughter and then by his son (in violation of the requirements of NPP GA-85, paragraphs 7.1.3; 7.1.4 ; 7.1.5).
In the time interval between 17:43:34 and 17:43:37, Yana sat in the left chair and at 17:44:10 she asked her father to lift the chair up. At 17:47:06, the reserve PIC suggested that his daughter “pilot” the plane (“Well, Yana, will you pilot? Hold on to the helm, hold on”). In the period from 17:47:10 to 17:50:44, using the autopilot course setter to demonstrate the daughter of aircraft control, a maneuver was performed to the left from a course of 111° to 102°, then to the right to 115°, followed by (after 2 minutes 40 seconds . after the start of the maneuver) by the aircraft reaching the set heading of 102°. After the aircraft entered this course, Yana vacated the PIC seat at 17:51:12, remaining in the cockpit.
For 7.5 minutes, when the daughter of the reserve PIC occupied the pilot's seat of the PIC, conversations were held between the father and daughter, distracting the crew from controlling the flight parameters.
From 17:50:04 to 17:50:46 the co-pilot made a report to Novosibirsk-control and Novokuznetsk-control controllers about the passage of Novokuznetsk and the planned time of passing the Zakir checkpoint at 17:59.
At 17:51:55, the left seat of the PIC was taken by the son of the reserve PIC, Eldar. the reserve PIC decided to demonstrate to him the principles of piloting an aircraft by performing a similar maneuver just shown to his daughter. At 17:54:25, at the request of his son to “turn” the steering wheel, the reserve PIC gave permission and at 17:54:35 said: “So, watch the land where you will turn. Let's go left, turn left!"
The son of the reserve PIC, starting from 17:54:39, made efforts to the left helm, deviating it to the left by 3 ... 4 ° for 5 seconds. At the same time, the autopilot worked to parry the created roll by deflecting the right aileron. At 17:54:44, the standby PIC switched on the “heading setter” submode and turned the autopilot heading setter handle to turn to the left by more than 15° from the initial heading of 105°, which created a left bank of 21.5° and reduced the efforts at the helm. At 17:54:52, with a left bank of 17…19°, the standby PIC turned the control knob to the right to return to the initial heading of 105°. The autopilot deflected the ailerons to reduce the left roll.
Thus, unlike the previous maneuver, with the permission of the reserve PIC, his son made efforts to the left helm, keeping it in a position close to neutral
The co-pilot held the right helm at that time, possibly securing it against deviations by the son of the reserve PIC - from 17:54:58, the left or right or both helms were held at a position of 3 ... 5 ° to the right.
From 17:55:05 the plane changed from left to right bank.
Holding the controls while the aircraft was performing turns with rolls variable in magnitude and direction led to the counteraction of the steering machine of the autopilot, the appearance on the held controls of variable forces in magnitude and direction, and was the cause of unintentional unsignaled (instrumentally) disconnection of the autopilot from the aileron control wiring, which occurred at 17 :55:25 with an increase in the total forces on the steering wheels up to 11 ... 13 kg.
Studies have shown that the disconnection of the autopilot from the control of the ailerons while holding the helm (handwheels) occurs at efforts less than those stated in the Flight Manual (AFM) and other regulatory documents (15 ... 17 kg). By holding both controls, the forces between them can be distributed in such a way that the moment of disconnection may not be noticed by the pilot.
The RLE lacks proper information, and the flight crew training program does not contain the methodology and training for recognizing the disconnection of the autopilot from control along the roll channel and the features of piloting an aircraft with the autopilot disconnected along the roll.
Since in the process of overpowering and after disconnecting the autopilot, the controls were held in a position corresponding to a slight deflection of the ailerons to the right roll, the aircraft continued to increase the roll. The increase in roll remained unnoticed by the crew due to the distraction of their attention by unauthorized persons in the cockpit and the lack of light and sound alarms on the aircraft about the disconnection of the autopilot. Moreover, the alarm system available on the aircraft, even after disconnecting the autopilot, continued to provide the crew with information about its operation in the previously set mode, although the autopilot ceased to perform its function of stabilization and control in the roll channel.
When the bank reached 20°, at 17:55:36, the ailerons were additionally deflected by 1.5…2° to the right bank. It was not possible to establish to which of the helms efforts were made to additionally deflect the ailerons. Due to the additional steering wheel deflection, the right bank of the aircraft began to increase more intensively, by 17:55:49 it exceeded its operational limit - 45° and continued to go unnoticed by the crew. After reaching this roll, the autopilot could not fully perform its functions to stabilize the height. The aircraft went into a descent.
From 17:55:12 to 17:55:36 the reserve PIC was distracted from control over his son's actions and flight parameters by talking to his daughter.
At 17:55:36, Eldar, who was still in the left pilot's seat, was the first to notice "something incomprehensible" and drew the attention of his father, who was busy talking with Yana, to this: "Why is he turning?" the reserve PIC replied: “Does it turn itself?” Eldar confirmed "Yes". The pilots who were in the cockpit since that time have joined in the search for an explanation why the plane "turns". At 17:55:45, the PIC-passenger suggested that the aircraft had gone into the waiting area and the co-pilot supported him.
The autopilot, which continued to perform its functions in the pitch channel to maintain the flight altitude during the roll development after the servo was disconnected, brought the aircraft to the aerodynamic shaking mode and high angles of attack.
The crew detected a dangerous situation only by the increase in G-force and the appearance of aircraft shaking (buffing) from 17:55:52. By this time, the roll had reached more than 50 °, the angle of attack was 4 ... 4.5 °, and the vertical overload was 1.6 units. Simultaneously with the appearance of buffeting, in 2 seconds the angle of attack changed from 4.5° to 10° with practically unchanged deviations of the elevator and stabilizer, which indicates the manifestation of a "pickup" in the angle of attack.
the reserve PIC gave the command “Hold! Hold the helm! Hold on! and after 2 sec. after the appearance of buffeting at a bank of 63°, the co-pilot took vigorous measures to bring the aircraft out of the right bank by fully deflecting the yoke to the left. At the same time, having understood the command addressed to him and literally the son of the reserve PIC, he clamped the left helm in a position close to neutral for 3 ... 4 seconds, as a result of which the left aileron and three of the five spoilers on the left wing were not deflected. This, combined with an increase in the angle of attack, reduced the effectiveness of the lateral control of the aircraft (although it did not have a decisive effect), which did not allow to reduce the right roll, which reached 90 ° 19 seconds after turning the helm to the left.
The actions of the crew to parry the roll as a whole were inadequate to the situation. Expedient actions to bring the aircraft to operational angles of attack and restore lateral controllability would be to turn off the autopilot, return the steering wheel “away from you” to reduce the angle of attack, then bring the aircraft out of roll and descend.
In the process of parrying the roll, the autopilot, upon a signal about a decrease in the set flight altitude, rejected the elevator for pitching, which accelerated the aircraft's exit to high angles of attack and stall. At the same time, following the commands of the reserve PIC and the PIC-passenger “Reverse, turn to the left!”, which they gave over the next 21 seconds, the son of the reserve PIC deflected the helm, thereby preventing the co-pilot from flying, who, with a short stature (160 cm) and shifted almost to the rearmost position of the seat, and so had limited opportunities for piloting the aircraft.
Between 17:55:58 and 17:56:11, the Altitude Departure (twice), Stall Warning and Autopilot Disabled alarms occurred.
At the same time, with a right bank of 80 ... 90 °, the aircraft increased the pitch angle for a dive from -15 ° to -50 ° with an acceleration of speed at a vertical overload of about 2 units.
The intervention of the crew in the pitch control by deflecting the yoke column led to the disabling of the autopilot at 17:56:11 with the issuance of a corresponding alarm.
After disabling the autopilot, the automatic high-angle-of-attack protection system worked, which deflected the stabilizer into a dive from -1° to -0.5°. At the same time, the elevator was also rejected for a dive from -7.5 ° to + 2.5 °. These actions led to a decrease in the angle of attack to + 7 °, an increase in the average vertical speed of descent to 200 m / s, an increase in vertical overload and speed above the maximum permissible values. At the same time, from 17:56:04 to 17:56:18, the spatial orientation in roll was lost by the crew. Having restored the orientation, the co-pilot, by deflecting the steering wheel to the left, brought the aircraft out of the roll. The aircraft remained in a dive with a pitch angle of up to 40°. The speed reached 740 km/h by 17:56:29. The co-pilot, taking the helm “on himself”, rejected the elevator for pitching up to the mechanical stop, which created an overload of 4.6 ... 4.7 units above the established strength limits.
The reserve PIC continued to try to take his job, giving cue to his son “Get out, get out!”, but Eldar could not get out of the seat due to significant vertical g-forces and a narrow space between the seat and the port side.
Almost simultaneously with the deviation of the elevator for pitching, the crew reduced the operating mode of the engines. The action of these two factors led to an intensive drop in airspeed to 185…220 km/h by 17:56:41. At that moment, someone (either Eldar, getting up from his chair, or the reserve PIC, taking it) abruptly deflected the rudder at an angle of about 8 ° by involuntary giving the pedal. The aircraft went into a sharp right bank with the ailerons deflected to the left, performing a spin roll. After stalling and performing a spin roll at angles of attack of 30…35°, the aircraft switched to left rotation with an increase in the dive angle to 80…90° and a decrease in vertical acceleration to zero, i.e. to weightlessness.
At 17:56:54 the co-pilot, noticing the decrease in speed below 180 km/h, gave the command “Full throttle!” three times. The aircraft at that moment was practically in a steep dive and the initial phase of acceleration. The position of the reserve PIC in the seat, which had taken its place by 17:56:40…17:56:46, with his height of 170 cm and the seat shifted to almost the rearmost position, did not ensure normal control of the aircraft.
By 17:57:11 the speed reached 370 km/h, the aircraft slowed down its roll rotation (the bank leveled off within 20…22°, the pitch angle decreased to -20°. The reserve PIC attempted to stop it by alternately deflecting the pedal against rotation, which he managed to do at 17:57:56 at an altitude of about 300…400 m. Having made two spins to the left after stalling, with an average vertical speed of 75 m/s at 17:58:01 (0:58 on March 23 local time), the aircraft collided with the ground, completely collapsed and partially burned out. the passengers died.
March 22, 1994 in the area of Mezhdurechensk (Kemerovo region) at 20:00. 58 min. crashed and crashed an Airbus A-310, owned by Russian Airlines and flying on the route Moscow - Hong Kong. There were 63 passengers and 12 crew members on board. The opening of the black boxes subsequently showed that the cause of the disaster was the human factor, the crew's poor knowledge of this type of equipment and gross violation of instructions.
3.5 hours after takeoff, the crew commander Yaroslav Kudrinsky called his two children into the cockpit - daughter Yana and son Eldar, where, in violation of the charter, he allowed first his daughter and then his son to sit in the chair of the ship's commander. This circumstance was ignored by other crew members. In addition, in the cockpit was a friend of the Kudrinsky family - Makarov, also a pilot who flew on the same flight as a passenger.
Before letting the children take the command chair, Kudrinsky turned on the autopilot. First, the commander's daughter, 13-year-old Yana Kudrinskaya, was in the pilot's seat. She did not attempt to take any action to control the aircraft. After her, the captain's son, 15-year-old Eldar Kudrinsky, sat at the helm. The teenager held on to the steering wheel, rocking it slightly from side to side. Everything was perceived as entertainment and adults did not control the teenager. At one point, the guy shook the steering wheel harder and the autopilot, mistaking this for the pilot's command, turned off. In one second, the plane became obedient to a teenager who continued to play pilots.
The light signaling the disabling of the autopilot mode worked, but the crew did not notice this, since design feature A310 is the absence of an audible alarm disabling the autopilot. Once again tilting the handle of the steering wheel to the side, the boy introduced the airbus into a deep roll, which soon reached 45 degrees and caused an overload of about 5g. In the first seconds, both professional pilots could not understand the reason for the abnormal behavior of the aircraft for several seconds. And when the crew noticed that the autopilot was off, they tried to take their seats again.
Contrary to instructions, the co-pilot, in the absence of the commander in his seat, pushed his seat all the way back, which for a long time did not allow him to take up a working position due to the resulting overloads. And the aircraft commander, due to strong overloads and a large bank angle, could not get into his seat for a long time.
The situation was greatly complicated by the fact that in the left seat there was still the only person who had the physical ability to fly the aircraft - the 15-year-old son of the commander, who received and tried to carry out various, inconsistent and conflicting commands from his father, co-pilot and Makarov. According to the analysis of the "black box" soundtrack, Eldar's attempts to correct the situation were greatly hampered by ignorance of the pilot's jargon. As an example, the command “Hold the helm!” Was cited, which the boy mistook for a command to hold the helm in the extreme right position, while the pilots meant the command to level the aircraft.
Meanwhile, the bank had already reached 90 °, and the plane began to lose altitude. In order to prevent further descent, the autopilot (only the automatic roll was turned off) increased the pitch angle to such an extent that the aircraft began to quickly lose speed and went into a stall. The co-pilot completely turned off the automatic and managed to bring the plane out of the stall by lowering the nose. The overload decreased, and the commander finally managed to pull his son out of his chair and take a job. The pilots brought the plane into normal flight mode, but could not recognize their spatial position in time. Flying over a hill at low altitude, the plane caught on the edges of trees and crashed into a forest near the village of Maly Mayzas, about 20 kilometers southeast of Mezhdurechensk.
Crew talks, chronology of events
Symbols used in the text:
PIC - aircraft commander Ya. V. Kudrinsky
Yana is the commander's daughter, born in 1981.
Eldar - the son of a commander, born in 1978
2P - co-pilot I. V. Piskarev
Makarov is a pilot flying to Hong Kong as a passenger
E - one of the pilots in the cockpitBefore the crash - about half an hour. The plane flies on autopilot. In the cockpit are the aircraft commander, co-pilot and two strangers - the daughter of the aircraft commander Yana and passenger Makarov.
17:43:30: FAC [referring to his daughter Yana]: Come sit here now, on my chair, do you want to?
17:43:31: PIC left his workplace
17:43:34-17:43:37: Yana sat in the FAC chair
17:44:10: Yana: Dad, lift me up [Yana asked to lift her chair up]
2L: Novosibirsk, Aeroflot, 593rd passing your point at flight level 10,100.
17:47:06: FAC: Well, Yana, will you pilot?
Yana: No!
FAC: Don't press the buttons. Don't touch this red one!
Yana: Dad, can this be twisted?
FAC: Do you see Novokuznetsk on the left?
Yana: Are we flying so low?
FAC: Ten thousand one hundred meters.
Yana: That's a lot, right?
FAC: A lot...
Yana tries to leave the chair.
FAC: Wait, don't rush...
Yana: I'm being careful...
17:51:12: Yana left the FAC chair
The son of the aircraft commander Eldar appears.
17:51:47: Makarov: The counter is being removed.
17:51:55: Eldar sat in the chair of the FAC.
17:52:46: Eldar [referring to Makarov]: Are you filming?
17:52:48: Makarov: I'm filming.
Eldar: Can this be twisted?
17:54:25: FAC: Yes! If you turn left, where will the plane go?
Eldar: Left!
FAC: Turn around! Turn left!
17:54:35: FAC: So, watch the land where you will turn. Let's go left, turn left!
Eldar: Great!
17:54:37: FAC: Let's go, right?
17:54:39: Eldar turned the steering wheel to the left by 3..4 degrees.
17:54:40: FAC: Is the plane going to the left?
17:54:41: Eldar: Coming.
17:54:42: FAC: You can't see it, right?
E:< неразб>
17:54:50: E: Now it will go to the right
17:54:53: Makarov: Set the artificial horizon for him normally.
17:05:05: The aircraft began to roll to the right.
17:55:12: FAC: What do you want, Yana?
Yana:< неразб>
17:55:15: FAC [referring to Yana]: Why?
Yana:< неразб>
17:55:18: FAC [referring to Yana]: In the first class you will only sleep.
17:55:27: FAC [addressing Yana]: Don't run there, otherwise they will kick us out of work.
17:55:28: Since that time, unnoticed by either the PIC or the co-pilot, a gradual increase in the right roll began.
17:55:36: Eldar [about the course of the aircraft]: Why is he turning?
17:55:38: FAC: Does he turn himself?
17:55:40: Eldar: Yes.
17:55:41: E: Why is he turning?
17:55:42: Eldar: I don't know.
17:55:45: FAC: Can't you knock the course?
17:55:45: Makarov: He still turns the zone, guys. [Makarov suggested that the plane was leaving for the holding area]
17:55:46: 2P: We went to the zone, waiting.
17:55:48: FAC: Yes?
17:55:49: 2P: Of course.
17:55:50: Makarov: Re-bya-ta! [Thus, Makarov reacted to the rapid increase in vertical acceleration in the aircraft]
17:55:52: FAC: Hold on! Hold the helm, hold!
17:55:55: 2P: Speed!
17:55:56:2P:V reverse side.
17:55:58: 2P: In reverse.
17:55:59: 2P: Back!
17:55:59: FAC: Turn left! Left! Right! Left!
17:56:06: E: Right?
17:56:08: E: Can't you see?
17:56:11: The autopilot has disengaged.
17:56:14: E: Turn right.
17:56:17: FAC: Right!
17:56:18: 2P: Yes, to the left! The earth is here!
17:56:24: FAC: Eldar, come out!
17:56:26: FAC: Crawl out back.
17:56:28: FAC: Crawl back, Eldar.
17:56:30: E: You see< неразб>No?
17:56:34: 2P: Ores for small!
17:56:38: FAC: Come out!
17:56:40: E: Come out, Eldar.
17:56:41: E: Come out< неразб>.
17:56:43: E: Come out.
17:56:44: E: Come out.
17:56:47: E:< неразб>.
17:56:49: E: Come out.
17:56:52: E: Come out, I say.
17:56:54: 2P: Full throttle! Full throttle! Full throttle!
17:56:55: By this time, the PIC had taken his workplace.
17:56:56: 2P: Got the gas!
17:56:57: FAC: Full throttle!
17:56:58: 2P: Gave!
17:56:59: E:< неразб>.
17:57:00: E: Full throttle.
17:57:05: E: I gave gas, gave it.
17:57:08: E: What is the speed?
17:57:09: E:< неразб>.
17:57:13: E:< неразб>.
17:57:17: E: Yes.
17:57:23: FAC: The gas is full!
17:57:25: 2P: The speed is very high!
17:57:27: E: Big, right?
17:57:28: E: Big.
17:57:29: E: I turned it on.
17:57:30: FAC: So, that's it, let's go, let's go.
17:57:32: FAC: Right! Right foot!
17:57:35: FAC: High speed.
17:57:36: FAC: Get the gas out!
17:57:37: 2P: Cleaned up!
17:57:42: FAC: Quietly-oh-oh-nechku!
17:57:47: 2P: B… again!
17:57:48: E: Don't turn to the right.
17:57:50: E: Speed added.
17:57:53: FAC: Let's get out now! Everything is fine!
17:57:55: FAC: Slowly on yourself.
17:57:56: FAC: Slowly.
17:57:57: FAC: Slowly, I say!
17:58:01: Aircraft hits the ground.
In the course of an investigation conducted jointly by Aeroflot and Airbus, changes were made to the aircraft documentation and the Aeroflot pilot training plan. And when flying on simulators, performed by Russian instructor pilot Vladimir Biryukov together with Airbus test pilots, it turned out that if both pilots could not reach the controls, the automatic control system could take control and quickly restore a straight-line safe flight.
Air crash statistics are a boring thing: most often, planes die from a collision with the ground, and the human factor leads to this. But behind a dry enumeration of reasons and facts, a chain of unpredictable events may be hidden. This happened 23 years ago, when one of the first Airbus A310 aircraft that appeared in our country crashed in Russia.
On the night of March 22-23, 1994, residents of Mezhdurechensk (Kemerovo region) heard an explosion. At the same time, aircraft number SU593 disappeared from the radars of the Novokuznetsk airport, making the flight Moscow - Hong Kong. Dispatchers at a loss: the crew did not give distress signals and did not report problems, he simply stopped responding to requests ground services. The disappearance of the aircraft and the silence of the pilots - in such cases, the alarm is immediately raised and the search and rescue service is connected. So this time, an An-12 aircraft of the Air Defense Forces is immediately sent from Novosibirsk to the Mezhdurechensk region, and a Mi-8 MGA helicopter is sent from Novokuznetsk. Rescuers outstripped local- an hour and a half later, he discovered a crashed plane near the village of Mayzas (10 km southeast of the city of Mezhdurechensk). This information is soon confirmed by the helicopter commander: from the air, burning fragments of an airbus are visible, scattered within a radius of 2 kilometers.
The first sensation on the approach is the strongest smell of kerosene. It looks like the plane literally crashed into pieces. The smallest fragments are scattered along the hillside in a hundred-meter-wide ribbon, stretching for about half a kilometer. The largest piece of the starboard side that I saw was three by four meters. Almost everything that remains of people is strongly pressed into the snow. Arms are visible somewhere, legs somewhere, backs somewhere ... Many passengers remained sitting, tied to the seat with belts. Among the dead, rescuers managed to find two children flying on this flight. One of the crew members decided to take them on vacation to show Hong Kong.
On board the aircraft were 63 passengers and 12 crew members, all 75 people died. From the very first minutes of the investigation, the catastrophe began to acquire conjectures and versions. Among them there were completely fantastic ones: the plane collided with a celestial body or became a victim of a UFO. Later there were rumors about a terrorist attack and depressurization of the aircraft, which caused the instant death of the crew and passengers. And the rescuers note some strangeness - the body of one of the teenagers for some reason is in the cockpit. At first, experts suggested that he was thrown there at the time of the disaster. But the transcript of the voice recorder took the investigation in a completely different direction. It began with the words: "Sit in my chair!" Further negotiations left no doubt: there was a child at the controls of the plane.
News agencies with sources in the investigating authorities immediately released shocking information. However, all competent persons unanimously declared: this cannot be true. Only a year later, the experts were forced to admit that one of the causes of the disaster was indeed the actions of a teenager who was at the helm.
At that time, as they say, we did not have the conscience or the courage to say that the plane was killed by a child. But the recording on the voice recorder and further investigation, which lasted a whole year, showed that other options were excluded.
But there were other factors as well. It took experts a year to explore each of them. They had to go back to the moment of departure of the ill-fated flight from Moscow and trace the path of the aircraft and the actions of the crew literally every minute.
So, on March 22, 1994, flight SU593 Moscow - Hong Kong took off from Sheremetyevo. A310, named « Glinka » , was bought « Aeroflot » in 1992, along with the first batch of foreign-made aircraft. Based on them, the largest Russian airline created a prestigious division of international transportation. A310s flew only abroad, and for these flights, pilots of the highest class were recruited. The pilots were required to have an impeccable reputation, at least 1,000 flight hours, and be fluent in English. All A310 pilots have been tested and trained in Airbus industry. Moreover, out of 3000 pilots « Aeroflot" for training sent the best - a total of 16 people. Among them was the replacement PIC (aircraft commander) of the Hong Kong flight, Yaroslav Kudrinsky.
En.wikipedia.org
On March 22, he shares the cockpit with a very experienced crew. This is the aircraft commander (FAC) Andrey Danilov, who has almost 10,000 flight hours, more than 950 of them on the Airbus A310. And co-pilot - Igor Piskarev, whose experience is a little less. He flew 5885 hours, flew a Tu-134 as a PIC, moved to the helm of an Airbus A310 in October 1993. Yaroslav Kudrinsky himself became the commander of the Airbus A310 in November 1992. Prior to that, he flew the Yak-40, An-12 and Il-76 aircraft. He has flown over 8940 hours, 907 of them with the Airbus A310. The Airbus is equipped with an autopilot capable of controlling the aircraft throughout the flight. It would seem that a safe flight is guaranteed.
Youtube.com
The Kudrinsky family, 80s. A still from the National Geographic documentary film A Child at the Control of an Airplane. Air crash investigation"
Among the passengers are the children of Yaroslav Kudrinsky, 13-year-old Yana and 15-year-old Eldar. Once a year Aeroflot » granted the families of pilots the right to preferential flights. Captain Kudrinsky decided to take the children to Hong Kong for four days. For teenagers, this was the first trip abroad.
Bingapis.com
Three and a half hours of flight passed unnoticed. Andrey Danilov took the liner out of the busy Moscow air zone and, having transferred control to Yaroslav Kudrinsky, went to rest in the cabin - he had a return morning flight from Hong Kong to Moscow. The Airbus A310 had left Novosibirsk behind and was almost halfway through the 10-hour journey when Captain Kudrinsky invited the children to sit in the pilot's seat. At this time, the most technically advanced aircraft of Aeroflot » was on autopilot.
Pretich.ru
Yana is the first in the cockpit. The girl does not show much interest in flying the plane, however, on the advice of her father, she puts her hands on the helm. At this time, Kudrinsky turns the autopilot control switch by 15 degrees, which allows him, without turning off the autopilot, to deflect the aircraft slightly to the left, which immediately displays a special device - the artificial horizon. Small, up to 15 degrees, course deviations may not be noticed visually, but the artificial horizon captures all deviations of the aircraft and displays them on its monitor. Yana feels the spontaneous movement of the steering wheel and immediately realizes that her father turned the plane. The girl tells him about it and leaves the chair. Captain Kudrinsky returns the plane to its original course.
Mega.politiqa.ru
Yana is replaced by Eldar. Unlike his sister, he takes the helm with undisguised interest and immediately asks his father if he can also turn. Kudrinsky Sr. allows and orders his son to look more carefully beyond the horizon. Eldar tries to turn the steering wheel to the left and notices that it is rather tight, not at all like it was when Yana was sitting in the pilot's seat. The teenager leans harder, but cannot change course - the autopilot keeps the plane in given direction, but Eldar does not know about it. Then the PIC applies the same technique - he again switches the autopilot heading 15 degrees to the left, using the same switch. The steering wheel in Eldar's hands turned smoothly to the left without much effort.
linkis.com
Like last time, Yaroslav Kudrinsky returns the course of the autopilot to normal mode, thereby stopping the turn of the liner and the illusion of control of the aircraft by Eldar. He then turns on the old navigation mode, which instructs the autopilot to return the plane to Hong Kong. The steering wheel becomes unyielding again, but Eldar continues to turn it to the left. Then tilts slightly to the right, enjoying the role of the pilot. This goes on for a little over three minutes. At some point, the teenager shook the steering wheel more than usual, and the autopilot, mistaking this for the pilot's command, turned off. From that moment on, the huge liner begins to obey the child, but no one notices this yet. The light signaling the disabling of the autopilot mode worked, but the crew did not pay attention to it. The pilots did not know about the design feature of the A310: the autopilot of this airliner turns off silently. Eldar was the first to notice the trouble: he saw that on the device the horizon line rises strongly to the right. The bank increased with every second, and while the pilots were trying to understand what was happening, it reached 45 degrees - this is more than the maximum allowable values for the A310. In addition, an arc appears on the on-board computer screen instead of a line showing the aircraft's flight path. This usually happens when the airliner is preparing to land and enters the holding area above the airport.
Youtube.com
The airbus is going in an arc at a speed of 650 km / h with a strong roll. The centrifugal force generated by the movement of the plane pushes everyone into their seats - its effect is twice the weight of a person. Frightened passengers understand the scream, bottles with mineral water and other small things. PIC Danilov wakes up in the cabin, understands that something is wrong with the liner, tries to get up and go into the cockpit, but overloads do not allow him to do this. Kudrinsky Sr. also cannot take the pilot's seat - centrifugal force chains him to the side panel. Co-pilot Igor Piskarev seeks to take control and manually bring the liner out of a dangerous position. But even before the autopilot was turned off, he pushed his seat all the way back and now cannot take up a working position due to the resulting overloads. With a jerk, he manages to reach the helm and grab it with one hand. The pilot forcefully turns the control column all the way to the left, but the plane does not react. It moves in a steep spiral, losing altitude. The only one holding the helm is the 15-year-old Eldar. The only thing left for the pilots is to try to explain to the child what to do.
FAC: Hold on! Hold the helm, hold!
2nd pilot: Speed!
2nd pilot: In the opposite direction! In reverse! Back!
FAC: Turn left! Left! Right! Left!
Eldar: Right? You don't see, do you?
But this turned out to be impossible: Eldar does not understand the jargon of the pilots. For example, the boy takes the command “Hold the helm!” as an order to keep it in the extreme right position, while the pilots meant the alignment of the aircraft. The liner enters a deep dive, and now it is rushing to the ground at a speed of 200 meters per second. For a few seconds, the overload caused by centrifugal force is replaced by almost complete weightlessness, and everything that was not fixed in the cabin and cabin, including passengers, is under the ceiling.
Youtube.com
Piskarev finally manages to jerk the helm towards himself. The liner goes up into the sky like a candle - the co-pilot lifted the nose of the plane too much. Again overload, this time 4 times. The plane is flying too steeply upwards, the engine power is starting to be lacking. The liner seems to hang in the air. This moment is used by Yaroslav Kudrinsky - he manages to take the pilot's seat. But the plane again goes into a tailspin and starts falling from a height of 6,000 meters. The PIC and the co-pilot continue their attempts to save the liner. With the help of the steering wheel, Kudrinsky almost manages to stop the rotation of the aircraft. The A310 is coming out of a spin, but the pilots don't know for sure how much altitude they've lost.
FAC: The gas is full!
2 pilot: The speed is very high!
FAC: So, that's it, let's go, let's go. Right! High speed. Get the gas out!
2 pilot: Cleaned up!
FAC: Quietly-oh-oh-nechku!
FAC: Let's go now! Everything is fine! Slowly towards yourself. Slowly. Slowly, I say!
Aircraft impact with the ground.
The bodies of 22 Airbus passengers have not been identified. By decision of the Russian authorities, they were all cremated together. Meanwhile, the investigation of the disaster continued, and the experts had to work in difficult conditions. It was a precedent, the first time that a foreign-made aircraft crashed on a Russian airline flight. « Aeroflot » and Airbus Industry tried to soften the blow to their reputation - the lawyers of each side worked very hard, and it was not easy for the investigators to strike a balance.
airdisaster.ru
The investigation confirmed that the autopilot was on when the crash began. So, even though there were children in the cockpit, the plane had to follow its course. And the main question that the experts had to answer was: what happened when Eldar sat at the helm? As the transcript of the recorders showed, Eldar, unlike his sister, tried to turn the helm before his father gave the command to the autopilot to turn the plane. The steering wheel did not give in, and the teenager made some effort. It was this action that led to a partial shutdown of the autopilot.
Cepolina.com
Here it is necessary to make a small digression. An autopilot is an aircraft computer that controls its altitude, speed and heading. Altitude and heading are set by three tools: the rudder responsible for turning left and right, the elevator and the ailerons - elements that determine the roll of the aircraft. These aerodynamic controls on the liner look like moving part of the trailing edge of the wing. Eldar's actions led to the disabling of the autopilot precisely from the control of the ailerons. In fact, two and a half minutes before the tragedy, the roll rudders were in the hands of a teenager and began to respond to all his actions.
The peculiarity of this aircraft is that it does not have a sound signal for turning off the autopilot, while Russian aircraft have it. Allowing his son to take the helm - although this is a violation - the captain of the liner was sure that in which case the crew would hear the signal and detect the autopilot was turned off. But on the A310, this signal is given by one small bulb, and the pilots might not know this.
There was another reason why the crew did not understand what was happening: the instrument panel showed that the autopilot was on - after all, the device controlled all other flight parameters. When Eldar noticed a roll on the artificial horizon, the plane could be levelled. But here the pilots are distracted by a false waiting area - after all, Kudrinsky returned the plane to a given course. While they are trying to figure out what's wrong, the plane goes into a critical roll. He cannot fly in this state and begins to lose altitude.
airdisaster.ru
Could the plane have been saved? To answer this question, the experts had to simulate the disaster on a simulator that was located at the Airbus Industry facility in France. As the modification showed, the pilots overdid it, bringing the plane out of the dive. All they had to do was let go of the steering wheel, and then the plane would not soar vertically into the sky. The A310 has a built-in self-preservation mechanism that will not let it fall off even at very low speeds. It seems that despite their training, the pilots did not know this. As shown by simulator flights conducted by Vladimir Biryukov together with Airbus testers, if both pilots could not reach the controls, the automatic control system would independently restore a safe flight.
Loveniza.blogspot.ru
The fact that a 15-year-old teenager was flying the plane was not the only cause of the disaster. The conclusions made by Vladimir Biryukov demonstrated the insufficient training of pilots to fly the A310. Even people who have undergone special training did not know that the autopilot could be partially switched off, and did not understand that the aircraft was switched to the mode manual control ailerons. This feature of the A310 continues to this day, allowing pilots to change individual flight parameters. But modern pilots must be warned about it.
Sunpics.ru
After investigation changes were made to the documentation of the aircraft and the training plan for Aeroflot pilots. In particular , now to the user manual of all Airbus A310s, a clause on spontaneous turning off automatic control of the ailerons when a force of more than 10 kg is applied to the helm for 30 or more seconds.
Crew « Glinka » buried at the Mitinsky cemetery next to the firefighters who extinguished the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. The grave of Yana and Eldar is located next to his father's.
- Film made about National Geographic Channel's investigation into the crash of Flight 593 « Child at the controls of an airliner », which is shown in the 3rd season of the documentary television series « Air crash investigations » .
- On April 11, 1994, a plane crashed in the United States. An eight-year-old girl sat in the pilot's seat; nearby - the pilot-instructor and the father.
» (computer reconstruction)
Fall from the train
Strangers in the cockpit, unexplored features of aircraft instruments
Fragments of the A310 fuselage - a fragment of the inscription "AEROFLOT"
Flight SU593 crash took place on March 22, 1994 near Mezhdurechensk in the Kemerovo region. As a result of the fall of the Aeroflot A310 aircraft, all 75 people on board were killed.
The main cause of the disaster was an unacceptable situation in which the aircraft commander put his fifteen-year-old son at the helm of the airliner, whose unintentional actions led to a partial shutdown of the autopilot. Secondary reasons were the undocumented behavior of the autopilot, and the absence, at that time, of the rules for making decisions in such situations in the crew training program.
Crew
Flight
Flight 593 was operated by an Airbus A310-304 (F-OGQS "M. Glinka") from Moscow Sheremetyevo Airport (SVO) to Kaitak Airport, Hong Kong (HKG). Crew commander Yaroslav Kudrinsky took on board his two children - daughter Yana and son Eldar. When the plane was flying in the Novokuznetsk region, Kudrinsky, in violation of the charter, allowed first his daughter, and then his son, to sit in the ship's commander's chair. This circumstance was ignored by other crew members.
Catastrophe
Before allowing the children to take the command chair, Kudrinsky turned on the autopilot. The daughter of the commander did not try to take any action to control the aircraft. After her, the captain's son, 15-year-old Eldar Kudrinsky, sat at the helm. The teenager held on to the steering wheel, rocking it slightly from side to side, which could not lead to the autopilot being turned off by “overpowering”. However, in the end, Eldar applied a force of 8-10 kg to the helm for 30 seconds, which led to a partial shutdown of the autopilot, which stopped giving commands to the ailerons, which, in turn, caused an uncontrollable roll to the right side. Prior to this, this feature of the A310 autopilot was unknown to the crew. The light alarm for disabling the mode worked, but the crew did not notice this, since the design feature of the A310 is the absence of an audible signal for disabling the autopilot.
Eldar was the first to notice the roll of the plane and informed his father about it. However, both professional pilots for several seconds could not understand the reason for the abnormal behavior of the aircraft. As the trackline on the screen changed to a circle, the co-pilot assumed that the aircraft had entered the "holding zone", that is, it was describing circles of large diameter - a flight pattern used while waiting for landing clearance.
The aircraft banked to the right at a rate of about 1.5° per second, and soon the right bank reached 45°, which was above the acceptable limit. This caused significant positive g-forces (4.8 g). When the crew noticed that the autopilot had been disabled, they tried to retake their seats.
Contrary to instructions, the co-pilot, in the absence of the commander in his seat, pushed his seat all the way back, which for a long time did not allow him to take up a working position due to the resulting overloads. The commander of the aircraft, due to strong overloads and a large bank angle, could not get into his seat for a long time.
The situation was greatly complicated by the fact that in the left seat there was still the only person who had the physical ability to fly the aircraft - the 15-year-old son of the commander, who received and tried to carry out various, inconsistent and conflicting commands from his father, co-pilot and a third adult friend who was in the cockpit the families of the crew commander, also a pilot, who flew on the same flight and came to the cockpit with the children. According to the analysis of the "black box" soundtrack, Eldar's attempts to correct the situation were greatly hampered by ignorance of the pilot's jargon. As an example, the command “Hold the helm!” Was cited, which the boy mistook for a command to hold the helm in the extreme right position, while the pilots meant the command to level the aircraft.
Meanwhile, the bank had already reached 90 °, and the plane began to lose altitude. In order to prevent further descent, the autopilot (only the bank was turned off) increased the pitch angle to such an extent that the aircraft began to quickly lose speed and went into a stall. The co-pilot completely turned off the automatic and managed to bring the plane out of the stall by lowering the nose. The overload decreased, and the commander finally managed to pull his son out of his chair and take a job. The pilots brought the plane into normal flight mode, but could not recognize their spatial position in time. Flying over a hill at low altitude, the plane caught on the edges of trees and crashed into a forest near the village of Maly Mayzas, about 20 kilometers southeast of Mezhdurechensk.
Consequences of the plane crash
In the course of an investigation conducted jointly by Aeroflot and Airbus, changes were made to the documentation of the aircraft and Aeroflot's pilot training plan. In particular, now in the flight manual on the website airdisaster.ru
