Unofficial version of the death of that 154. Igor Zhuravlev blogger

Over the Black Sea, became the 73rd liner of this family, lost as a result aviation accidents. The total number of deaths in such accidents over 44 years has reached 3,263 people. Portal Yuga.ru looked into the history of the operation of the aircraft and remembered the largest disasters with his participation.

Tu-154 is a passenger aircraft developed in the 1960s in the USSR at the Tupolev Design Bureau. It was intended for the needs of medium-haul airlines and for a long time was the most massive Soviet jet passenger aircraft.

The first flight was carried out on October 3, 1968. Tu-154 was mass-produced from 1970 to 1998. From 1998 to 2013, small-scale production of the Tu-154M modification was carried out at the Aviakor plant in Samara. A total of 1026 machines were manufactured. Until the end of the 2000s, it was one of the most common aircraft on medium-range routes in Russia.

The aircraft with tail number RA-85572, which crashed on December 25, 2016 over the Black Sea, was manufactured in 1983 and belonged to the Tu-154B-2 modification. This modification was produced from 1978 to 1986: an economy class cabin designed for 180 passengers, an improved automatic on-board control system. In 1983, the RA-85572 board was transferred to the USSR Air Force.

According to some Tu-154 pilots, the aircraft is too complicated for mass production. passenger liner and requires highly qualified both flight and ground personnel.

At the end of the 20th century, the aircraft, designed in the 1960s, became obsolete, and airlines began to replace it with modern analogues - the Boeing 737 and Airbus A320.

In 2002, the EU countries, due to inconsistencies in the level of permissible noise, banned the flights of Tu-154s that were not equipped with special noise-absorbing panels. And since 2006, all Tu-154 flights (except for the Tu-154M modification) in the EU have been completely banned. Aircraft of this type at that time were operated mainly in the CIS countries.

In the mid-2000s, the aircraft began to be gradually taken out of service. The main reason is the low fuel efficiency of the engines. Since the aircraft was designed in the 1960s, the developers did not face the issue of engine efficiency. The economic crisis of 2008 also contributed to the acceleration of the process of decommissioning the aircraft. In 2008, the entire Tu-154 fleet was withdrawn by S7, the following year Rossiya and Aeroflot did so. In 2011, the operation of the Tu-154 was stopped " Ural Airlines". In 2013, liners of this type were withdrawn from the air fleet by UTair, the largest Tu-154 operator at that time.

In October 2016, the last demonstration flight was made by Belarusian airline Belavia. The only commercial operator of Tu-154 aircraft in Russia in 2016 was the Alrosa airline, which has two Tu-154M aircraft in its fleet. According to unconfirmed reports, two Tu-154 aircraft, including the most old model of this family, released back in 1976, is owned by the North Korean airline Air Koryo.

In February 2013, the serial production of the liners was discontinued. The last aircraft of the family, released at the Samara plant "Aviakor", was transferred to the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation.

The largest disasters of domestic Tu-154

02/19/1973, Prague, 66 dead

The Tu-154 aircraft was performing a regular passenger flight from Moscow to Prague, when, while landing, it suddenly went into a rapid descent, having not reached the runway 470 m, crashed into the ground and collapsed. Killed 66 people out of 100 on board. This is the first incident in the history of the Tu-154 aircraft. The Czechoslovak commission could not establish the causes of the accident, only assuming that during the landing approach the airliner unexpectedly got into a turbulence zone, which led to a loss of stability. The Soviet commission came to the conclusion that the cause of the disaster was the error of the aircraft commander, who, during the landing approach, accidentally, due to the imperfection of the control system, changed the angle of the stabilizer.

07/08/1980, Alma-Ata, 166 dead, 9 wounded on the ground

The plane, which was flying on the route Alma-Ata - Rostov-on-Don - Simferopol, crashed almost immediately after takeoff. The aircraft demolished two residential barracks and four residential buildings, injuring nine people on the ground. By official version, the disaster occurred due to a sudden atmospheric disturbance that caused a powerful downward air flow (up to 14 m/s) and a strong tailwind(up to 20 m / s) during takeoff, at the time of mechanization cleaning, with high takeoff weight, in conditions of a high-altitude airfield and high air temperature. The combination of these factors at low flight altitude and with a sudden onset of a side roll, the correction of which briefly distracted the crew, predetermined the fatal outcome of the flight.

11/16/1981, Norilsk, 99 dead

The liner was completing a passenger flight from Krasnoyarsk and was landing when it lost altitude and landed on the field, about 500 m short of the runway, after which it crashed into the embankment of the radio beacon and collapsed. 99 people out of 167 on board were killed. According to the conclusion of the commission, the cause of the crash was the loss of longitudinal controllability of the aircraft at the final stage of the landing approach due to design features aircraft. In addition, the crew realized too late that the situation was threatening with an accident, and the decision to go around was not made in time.

12/23/1984, Krasnoyarsk, 110 dead

The liner was supposed to carry out a passenger flight to Irkutsk, when an engine failure occurred during climb. The crew decided to return, but a fire broke out during the landing approach, which destroyed the control systems. The car crashed to the ground 3 km before runway number 29 and collapsed. The root cause of the disaster was the destruction of the disk of the first stage of one of the engines, which occurred due to the presence of fatigue cracks. The cracks were caused by a manufacturing defect.

07/10/1985, Uchkuduk, 200 dead

This disaster was the largest in terms of the number of deaths in the history of Soviet aviation and Tu-154 aircraft. The airliner, performing a regular flight on the route Karshi - Ufa - Leningrad, 46 minutes after takeoff at an altitude of 11 thousand 600 m lost speed, fell into a flat tailspin and crashed to the ground.

According to the official conclusion, this happened under the influence of a high non-standard outdoor temperature, a small margin in terms of the angle of attack and engine thrust. The crew made a number of deviations from the requirements, lost speed - and failed to pilot the aircraft. An unofficial version is widespread: before the flight, the crew's rest regime was violated, as a result of which the total wakefulness of the pilots amounted to almost 24 hours. And shortly after the start of the flight, the crew fell asleep.

07.12.1995, Khabarovsk region, 98 dead

The Tu-154B-1 airliner of the Khabarovsk joint air squadron, flying along the route Khabarovsk - Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk - Khabarovsk - Ulan-Ude - Novosibirsk, crashed into Mount Bo-Dzhausa 274 km from Khabarovsk. The cause of the disaster, presumably, was the asymmetric transfer of fuel from the tanks. The ship's commander mistakenly increased the formed right roll, and the flight became uncontrollable.

07/04/2001, Irkutsk, 145 dead

While landing at the Irkutsk airport, the airliner suddenly fell into a flat tailspin and crashed to the ground. During the landing approach, the crew allowed the aircraft speed to drop below the permissible speed by 10-15 km/h. The autopilot, which was in altitude hold mode, increased the pitch angle as the speed dropped, resulting in an even greater loss of speed. Having discovered a dangerous situation, the crew added a mode to the engines, rejected the steering wheel to the left and away from themselves, which led to a rapid increase in vertical speed and an increase in roll to the left. Having lost spatial orientation, the pilot tried to bring the plane out of the roll, but by his actions only increased it. The State Commission called the erroneous actions of the crew the cause of the disaster.

10/04/2001, Black Sea, 78 dead

The Tu-154M airliner of Siberia Airlines was flying on the Tel Aviv-Novosibirsk route, but crashed into the Black Sea 1 hour and 45 minutes after takeoff. According to the conclusion of the Interstate Aviation Committee, the plane was unintentionally shot down by a Ukrainian S-200 anti-aircraft missile launched during Ukrainian military exercises on the Crimean peninsula. Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksandr Kuzmuk apologized for the incident. Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma acknowledged Ukraine's responsibility for the incident and dismissed the defense minister.

08/24/2004, Kamensk, 46 dead

The plane took off from Moscow and headed for Sochi. During the flight over the Rostov region, a strong explosion occurred in the tail section of the liner. The plane lost control and began to fall. The crew tried with all their might to keep the plane in the air, but the uncontrolled liner crashed to the ground near the village of Glubokoye Kamensky district Rostov region and completely collapsed. The plane was blasted by a suicide bomber. Immediately after the attacks (on the same day, a Tu-134 aircraft flying from Moscow to Volgograd exploded), the Islambuli Brigades terrorist organization took responsibility for them. But later Shamil Basayev said that he had prepared the attacks.

According to Basayev, the terrorists he sent did not blow up the planes, but only captured them. Basayev claimed that the planes were shot down by Russian air defense missiles, as the Russian leadership was afraid that the planes would be sent to any objects in Moscow or St. Petersburg.

08/22/2006, Donetsk, 170 dead

The Russian airliner was performing a scheduled passenger flight from Anapa to St. Petersburg, but it encountered a severe thunderstorm over the Donetsk region. The crew asked the controller for permission to fly to a higher flight level, but then the aircraft lost altitude, and three minutes later it crashed near the village of Sukhaya Balka in the Konstantinovsky district of the Donetsk region.

“The lack of control over the flight speed and the failure to follow the instructions of the Flight Operations Manual (Flight Operations Manual) to prevent the aircraft from entering the stall mode with unsatisfactory interaction in the crew did not allow preventing the situation from turning into a catastrophic one”, - said in the final conclusion of the Interstate Aviation Commission.

04/10/2010, Smolensk, 96 dead

The Tu-154M presidential airliner of the Polish Air Force was flying on the Warsaw-Smolensk route, but when landing at the Smolensk-Severny airfield in heavy fog, the liner collided with trees, capsized, crashed to the ground and completely collapsed. All 96 people on board were killed, including Polish President Lech Kaczynski, his wife Maria Kaczynska, as well as well-known Polish politicians, almost all the high military command, and public and religious figures. They were on their way to Russia on a private visit as a Polish delegation to the mourning events on the occasion of the 70th anniversary of the Katyn Massacre. An investigation by the Interstate Aviation Committee found that all aircraft systems were working normally before impact with the ground; due to fog, visibility at the airfield was below the landing limit, which the crew was notified about. The causes of the disaster were called the wrong actions of the crew of the aircraft and psychological pressure on it.

"The fleeting destruction of an aircraft cannot be caused by simple structural fatigue"

Experts and pilots continue to discuss the possible causes of the Tu-154 crash over the Black Sea, based on information that appears in the media and comes from the lips of officials at the scene of the tragedy. So far, three main versions remain in work: pilot error, technical malfunction and terrorist attack. However, as the spokesman said Russian President Dmitry Peskov, none of the versions of what happened have received any clear development yet. At the same time, he noted that the version of the terrorist attack "is far from being in the forefront."

One of the current pilots of a major Russian airline shared his thoughts on this with MK:

Does the investigation already have some results of examinations? As far as I know, the issue is resolved only on fuel. Investigators have no complaints against him. As for everything else - there is complete fog.

But let's think together. If we talk about errors in piloting technique, then if something like this happened, in any case, the crew would at least have time to say something, somehow warn. And then - complete silence. Usually, if the crew does not have time to broadcast anything, it is either a terrorist attack or structural failure.

Initially, there was information that the plane disappeared at about the 7th minute of the flight. Now they are talking about two minutes. This is also confirmed by radio data. Let me explain: there is a standard procedure when, during takeoff, the crew is in touch with the tower, and immediately after takeoff, they are transferred to communication with the circle. So, based on the data of radio traffic, we can say that the moment of the disaster is the very time when the crew switched from communication with the tower to communication with the circle. And at that moment, the crew could no longer be contacted. And this is just about two minutes from the start of takeoff. Precisely because everything happened so fleetingly, it can be assumed that this is either a destruction of the structure, or still a terrorist attack.

At the same time, the design of the Tu-154 is quite rigid, all of its systems are repeatedly redundant. If it fell apart from hitting the water, then the fuselage could split into two or three parts, but there would hardly be a large number of fragments that turned out to be small and were carried away by the current for tens of kilometers.

It is also noteworthy that already at the very first moment after the tragedy, they immediately spoke about the spread of fragments of the structure from 1.5 to 8 km, which is also surprising. Usually, if there is a large spread of fragments, then this is evidence that the aircraft began to fall apart already in the air.

But such transient destruction cannot be caused by simple fatigue of the structure. If the destruction in the air is not explosive, then the plane will simply fall and be in one place. But when there are a lot of fragments, and they are scattered over a large territory, one can definitely talk about an explosion here.

As for the terrorist attack, I have only one doubt: the plane was not supposed to end up in Sochi, refueling was planned in Mozdok, and therefore it is unlikely that someone at the Adler airport could purposefully bring explosives onto this particular board.

o believe a military pilot in the past: someone could easily ask for a small “parcel” to be passed to a friend, relative, acquaintance in Khmeimim. Unfortunately, not a single airfield or airport in our country is insured against this. Special control, when passengers are stripped down to their socks, is the prerogative of only large metropolitan airports.

Pilots I know from Sochi have just told me about this: the Minister of Transport, Sokolov, allegedly announced that the Tu-154 had a non-synchronous retraction of the flaps. But we, the pilots, immediately dismiss this version, since this aircraft has a tracking system. If the flaps begin to retract inconsistently - one faster, the other slower - the brake immediately takes effect, which stops the movement of the flaps altogether and the serviceable flap adjusts to the angle to which the faulty one is released. That is, the tracking system does not allow the aircraft to roll over due to desynchronization either when releasing or when retracting the flaps. So this assumption of Mr. Sokolov cannot be considered serious, he himself is not a pilot, but simply a minister.

But we, the pilots, remember well that all the latest cases of air crashes, when the crews did not have time to report anything to the ground, were always terrorist attacks.

We also talked about how the situation on board could develop with Major General of Aviation, Honored Pilot of the Russian Federation Vladimir Popov and Honored Pilot of the Russian Federation, former flight director of Vnukovo Airlines Yuri Sytnik.

- Previously, a version was put forward that the Tu-154 could fall due to low-quality fuel.

According to indirect signs, different options can be considered. If there was a refueling, the question immediately arises, how good was the fuel? Vladimir Popov says - This could affect the performance of the fuel system. The Tu-154 has three engines. If all three failed at the same time, this is one of the indirect signs pointing to this version. Because fuel automation fails at the same time only in the presence of substandard fuel.

Second, something could also happen to the controls. The Tu-154 has a booster aircraft control system. The hydraulic power elements are located in the traction control system, and you directly control only a part of this rod, where you switch certain valves of the hydraulic system, and they transmit this force further.

- Could the failure be gradual or did it all happen quickly enough?

Everything could happen in a very limited time, within 20-30 seconds.

- Did the crew manage to understand what happened?

I have also been to emergency situations, the pilots at this time have no time to think about something extraneous. The crew did not even have time to press the "sos" button. In the cockpit there is a commander, a right pilot, a navigator, a flight engineer and an onboard technician. One of them could provide information. But this did not follow.

It must be borne in mind that the workload during takeoff is colossal. There is a separation, landing gear, flaps, engine speed are removed, the rate of climb in the vertical is specified ... The pilot changes course. In Adler, a 30-degree turn to the right is performed to free the awning of the runway. There, after all, takeoff and landing is carried out over the sea. The pilots are very busy at this time, the crew members, purely physically, could not have time to give some information.

The navigation and flight control devices that determine the position of the aircraft in the air could be late or show some inaccuracies. Which could make the situation worse. At an altitude of 400 meters they entered the clouds. Let them now say that it was not 10-magnitude cloudiness. But keep in mind that it was dark, the horizon is not visible. The pilot cannot visually identify the position of the aircraft in space. It remains to monitor the devices. And where is the guarantee that the instruments of the navigation complex worked normally?

Now we need to lift the "black" boxes. The picture will be restored in sufficient detail, because the tester records several hundred parameters, these are not only speed, altitude, overload, but also the steering wheel deviation - in what second, by how many degrees. What rpm were there, what engine temperature was, what pressure the booster system worked with.

Honored Pilot of the Russian Federation Yuri Mikhailovich Sytnik has his own version of what happened.

The plane crashed into the sea shortly after takeoff. There could be a collision with some object - a bird or an unmanned aerial vehicle aircraft- drone. Also, I do not rule out an explosion on board. When the situation develops within 10 - 15 seconds, one of the crew members manages to press the exit to external communication. Even if he does not give a message, some commands, screams can be heard on the air, but here - silence ... Either the crew thought that he could handle it and did not want to go on air ahead of time, or he could no longer speak.

When aircraft systems fail, the crew will usually get in touch, ask for a reverse course landing, or ask for a turnaround. There was none of that, so something extraordinary happened.

Therefore, I will say that some non-enveloped device could explode in the cockpit, blind the crew ...

- It was a military aircraft. Are any civilian specialists allowed to see him during refueling?

In Adler very good airport, the first person of the state flies there, the top leadership of the country sits down. There is a very good security service, perfected in seconds - the work of special services and maintenance services is scheduled. Not many people could approach this plane. They could change the water, clean the salon, clean the toilets. Customs officers approached, as passengers flew abroad. There are cameras everywhere now, everything is being recorded. The secret services, I think, are already looking through all the records. I think that the "black" boxes will soon be found, and in five days we will know the causes of the disaster.

The FSB named four main working versions of the crash of the Tu-154 of the Ministry of Defense. This is "foreign objects entering the engine, low-quality fuel, which caused a loss of power and failure of the engines, a pilot error, a technical malfunction of the aircraft."

"Signs and facts indicating the possibility of a terrorist act or sabotage on board an aircraft have not been received at the present time," Interfax quotes a message from the FSB Public Relations Center. It was established that there were 150 kg of cargo on board, including food and medicine, but there were no military and dual-use cargo or pyrotechnics among them. It also follows from the report that the landing of the liner in Sochi was unplanned, it was assumed that it would refuel in Mozdok, but there were adverse weather conditions there on Sunday night and the board was redirected to Adler. Upon landing, the aircraft was taken under guard by the military and border guards, during refueling, one officer of the Border Guard Service of the FSB of Russia and one officer of the Sochi customs boarded, and the crew commander and flight engineer got off the plane to control the refueling.

Previously, the version of the attack was called unlikely by both the military and the Ministry of Transport. Presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov on Monday afternoon said that so far “none of the versions are being developed” and the version of the terrorist attack is not in the forefront. The military also rejected the possibility of a malfunction of the aircraft, which, although not new, had a reserve flight resource and underwent several overhauls.

The investigation has established eyewitnesses of the plane crash and is studying the recording of the video recorder, the FSB also said. On Sunday, media reported that surveillance cameras filmed a flash over the Black Sea near the Sochi airport. An Interfax source at the emergency response headquarters said that the outbreak occurred half an hour after the aircraft disappeared from radar screens and was not related to the crash. At headquarters, the recordings of the outbreak were carefully studied, he added. Assumptions that an emergency situation up to an explosion could allegedly have occurred on board, he called premature: “It is necessary to raise the engines to the surface and study their condition. It is also necessary to carefully study the data from the radar and the information stored on the flight recorders. Only after that any objective versions can be built.”

Tu-154 crash of the Ministry of Defense

Earlier it was reported that the Tu-154 did not get in touch when it was at a distance of 6250 m from the end of the airport runway. Divers found the hull of the liner on Monday afternoon at a distance of 1.7 km from the coast at a depth of 27 m, an Interfax source said. Before that, it was discovered by sonar. According to preliminary data, the aircraft was badly damaged. According to the interlocutor of the agency, a radio beacon was put up at the spot where the aircraft was found, and the zone of the search operation was localized. The black boxes of the aircraft, which, according to Kommersant, were not equipped with radio beacons for reasons of secrecy, were not found at 14.30 Moscow time. In the morning, the Ministry of Defense reported that separate fragments of the aircraft hull, the bodies of 11 people and 154 body fragments were found, the search was hampered by the complex bottom topography and a wide range of depths. According to TASS, the fuselage is located at a distance of 1.5 km in the Black Sea abeam Khosta.

On several dead passengers but not everyone was wearing life jackets, a source informed about the course of the search operation told RIA Novosti. According to him, this means that people in vests were preparing to evacuate.

The Russian Ministry of Defense soon denied rumors about life jackets on the passengers of the crashed Tu-154. “All the rumors, citing anonymous sources, that the passengers of the crashed Tu-154 aircraft were allegedly wearing life jackets are shameful insinuations that are absolutely untrue,” Interfax quoted the ministry as saying.

Investigators seized documents on the fallen Tu-154 at the Samara OJSC Aviakor - Aviation Plant, Interfax was told in the press service of the Russian Machines holding. “Employees of the enterprise who participated in the work on the aircraft provide the investigators with the maximum possible assistance,” the representative of the enterprise assured and explained that the study of technical documentation in such cases is a standard procedure.

The Ministry of Defense previously reported that the dead aircraft was released in 1983, the last repair of the aircraft took place on December 29, 2014, and in September 2016 its scheduled maintenance was carried out. The board belonged to the 223rd flight detachment of the Ministry of Defense, which operates passenger aircraft in the interests of the military department. According to a Vedomosti source close to the Ministry of Defense, the aircraft had a significant - more than half of the assigned - flight resource reserve (the number of takeoffs, landings and flight hours) and a sufficient calendar resource reserve (the period during which operation is permissible). IN civil airlines this modification has not been used for a long time, but the military has a much lower flight time than commercial airlines, he explained.

The aircraft was not overloaded, and there were no serious emergency situations when taxiing to the runway before takeoff, Kommersant writes, citing sources interviewed and fragments of the crew’s conversations with the dispatcher posted on the Internet. 2 minutes 44 seconds after takeoff, the controller informed the crew about an oncoming aircraft that was landing. The transport worker confirmed the receipt of the command, but after a few seconds did not answer the call of the oncoming side, the newspaper writes. After that, the Tu-154 was called on all frequencies, but he did not answer and his mark on the radar screens disappeared.

The pilot flying the Tu-154 said that during this time the crew had to turn off the headlights, remove the landing gear, and also the flaps - first half, up to 15 degrees, and when the speed reached 360 km / h - completely. In the first two minutes, the aircraft had to be transferred from takeoff to flight configuration and continue climbing 1200–1500 m. The interlocutor of the publication considers this stage of takeoff to be relatively calm. Military pilots interviewed by Kommersant do not rule out the possibility of a terrorist attack. But a high-ranking source of the newspaper in law enforcement agencies explained that every Russian plane flying to Syria is being monitored by allies and the military of NATO countries: “Even if we wanted to hide a terrorist attack on board, it would have been recorded and immediately made public by our neighbors in the region” . He added that the plane did not hit the water, but dived, going to the bottom relatively intact, which, according to him, also indicates the absence of external influence. Oil stains did not begin to appear on the surface of the water at the crash site until noon, and luggage and fragments of bodies and plating began to emerge even later, he added, they were carried over a large area by the current.

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 person, who began to pull the control sticks ridiculously, 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, started off - and drove into a snowdrift. Passed back - and crushed three cars nearby. Then he drove forward - and crashed with all his dope into a dumpster, on which 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 in perfect working order. And to assume that the pilot began to take off in a dead form in front of other crew members, not suicides, does not work either. And his voice on the recorder is absolutely sober.

However, the plane crashed - allegedly as a result of inexplicable actions of the crew. Or is there an explanation - but the military leadership is desperately hiding it?

Cunning journalists unearthed that the plane may have been heavily overloaded - hence all the consequences. Moreover, it was not overloaded at the Adler airport in Sochi, where it made an intermediate landing, but at the Chkalovsky military airfield near Moscow, from where it started.

The weight of the excess cargo is more than 10 tons. However, at Chkalovsky, according to documents, this Tu-1542B-2 was filled with kerosene 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 not critical. The pilot probably noted that the takeoff there occurred with an effort - but there could be many reasons for this: wind, atmospheric pressure, air temperature.

But in Adler, where the plane landed for refueling, this refueling played a fatal role. The aircraft tanks were filled with fuel already under the cork - up to 35.6 tons, which is why it takeoff weight and became more than allowed by more than 10 tons.

And if we accept this version with overload, everything that follows gets 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. Further, the rise occurred at a speed of 10 meters per second - instead of the usual 12-15 m / s.

And 2 seconds after taking off from the ground, the commander of the ship, 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 more gentle, take-off - on a steeper one. This is necessary in order to separate the planes taking off and going to land in height - without which they would constantly be threatened with a collision in the air.

But the increase in the angle of climb led to a drop in speed - too heavy an aircraft refused to perform this maneuver. Then the pilot, probably already realizing that some kind of pig was put on him in the form of excess cargo, gave the helm away from himself in order to stop climbing and thereby gain speed.

This happened at an altitude of 200 meters - and if the plane had remained in this echelon, even in violation of all the rules, the tragedy might not have happened. But Volkov piloted the car outside its permissible modes - which no one had done before him, since overloaded flights are strictly prohibited. And how the plane behaved in these conditions is hard to imagine. In addition, it is possible that that extra load, being poorly secured, also violated the alignment of the aircraft during takeoff.

As a result, a slight panic arose in the cockpit. The pilots began to retract the flaps ahead of schedule - in order to reduce air resistance and thereby gain speed faster.

Here began a dangerous rapprochement with the water, over which there was a take-off line. The speed was already decent - 500 km / h, Volkov abruptly took the helm to raise the plane, at the same time starting a U-turn - apparently, he decided to return to the airfield. Then the irreparable happened: the plane, in response to the actions of the pilot, did not go up, but crashed into the water, scattering into fragments from a collision with it ...

Such a scenario, based on data from recorders, is absolutely consistent - and looks much more plausible than Shoigu's delusional explanation that the pilot lost his spatial orientation and began to descend instead of climbing.

During takeoff, no spatial orientation is required from the pilot at all. In front of him are two main instruments: an altimeter and a speed indicator, he monitors their readings without being distracted by the views outside the window ...

You can also ask: how did an overloaded plane manage to break away from the runway? The answer is simple: there is a so-called screen effect, which significantly increases the lift 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 - semi-aircraft-semi-ships flying within these 15 meters in height with much more cargo 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 the lightweight medicines of Dr. Lisa, who was on this flight, and not an armored personnel carrier: in a passenger plane there is no wide port for the 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's tiles ... And why they decided to send it not by cargo, but by a passenger flight - there could also be any reasons. From sloppiness on the failure to send a combat cargo, which they decided to cover up gradually - to the very 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 stack that cannot be hidden from the eyes. But what exactly was there and what the true weight of it is - the pilots might not have known. After all, this is an army, where the order of the highest rank is above all instructions; and most likely that order was also provided with some kind of 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 faces a choice: either to make decent money - or to be left without a job and without pants.

And the famous Russian maybe at the same time, as they say, no one canceled!

Who ordered? Here, too, there can be a large scatter: from someone lieutenant colonel, deputy for armament - to Colonel General. Depending on what kind of cargo was driven onto the plane.

In short, in Chkalovsky the plane is overloaded, but this overload is compensated by incomplete refueling - and in Adler the tanks are already filled to capacity. Obviously, the calculation was to fly to the Syrian Khmeimim (destination) and back on their own fuel. And the fact that the commander of the ship agreed to these 35.6 tons of fuel in Adler speaks in favor of the fact that he still did not know the real magnitude of the overload. Fly it alone - you can still allow dashing daring, which Chkalov himself initiated in our aviation. But behind Volkov's back were his own crew of 7 people, and 84 more passengers, including the artists of the Alexandrov ensemble!

The fact that the Ministry of Defense in this case is not just obscure, but with might and main hides the truth - such facts speak.

1. Shoigu's version of "violation of spatial orientation (situational awareness) of the commander, which led to erroneous actions with the aircraft's controls" does not hold water. For any pilot, not only with 4000 flight hours, like Volkov, but also with ten times less, takeoff is the simplest action that does not require any special skills. Here, for example, landing in difficult weather conditions is a completely different matter. The accident 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 when taking off on a serviceable plane, no one has ever crashed.

2. The decoding of the recorders, probably already in the first days after the tragedy, gave the whole alignment of what happened. An analogy with the same Polish case in 2010 is appropriate here: then, on the 5th day, the IAC (Interstate Aviation Committee) issued an exhaustive version of the incident, which was fully confirmed later.

The IAC has been stubbornly silent about the Adler disaster for 6 months. On his website, where detailed analyzes of all flight accidents are published, there are only two brief messages that the investigation is ongoing. And another significant passage:

“Resources of research and expert institutions have been attracted to investigate this catastrophe. Among them is the Interstate Aviation Committee, which has extensive experience in investigating accidents with Tu-154 aircraft and the necessary resources to assist in expediting the investigation. At the same time, the IAC informs that the official comments on this investigation are provided exclusively by the Russian Ministry of Defense.

That is, read, "we were shut up, sorry."

3. Naturally, the Minister of Defense in the very first hours, if not minutes after the disaster, found out what kind of cargo was on board the crashed Tu. And the incredibly long search for the wreckage of the aircraft, which added absolutely nothing to the information of the recorders, suggests that they were looking for that very secret cargo. And not at all the truth, which was clear to the military immediately.

Well, and another question: why do the military, led by their minister, hide this truth like that? And from whom - from Putin himself or from the people?

Well, to hide it from Putin, I very much doubt it: he does not look like a person who can be circled around the finger like that. So 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 into a passenger plane something that should not have been close to it. And then a shadow on our entire army, in which such idiots are on horseback that they can ruin even the backbone of the Alexandrov ensemble with their idiocy.

Either the colonel-general, who enters the very head, is involved - and then also shame and disgrace: it turns out that through the change of Serdyukov to Shoigu, our army has not been cleansed of general outrage?

And the last thing. Remember, when we watched the film "Chapaev" as children, many of us shouted in the hall: "Chapaj, run!" Just as spontaneously, today, when everything has practically become clear with the Adler tragedy, I want to shout to the pilot Volkov: “Don't take this load! And he took it - do not take off above 200 meters above the sea!

After all, if you understand calm mind, who was not praised by the pilot, who fell into a storm of circumstances, he had a chance of salvation. Namely: when reloading the aircraft, do not even try to follow the instructions that oblige you to rise to such and such a height at such and such a distance from the airfield. Break it to hell, get a reprimand for it, even if it's dismissal - but save your own life and the lives of others. That is, fly at a minimum altitude, producing fuel - and when the weight of the aircraft decreases in an hour and a half, start lifting.

Another thing that again comes to mind is that if you decide to return to Adler, do a U-turn not by a standard turn with a side roll, which 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 at the same time greatly increases: a maneuver that is practically not used in modern aviation.

Yes, only this chance, which could save this plane, in the future would still be ghostly and deadly. Suppose Volkov could have managed to get out of the disastrous situation set by the organizers of his flight. Then the next time he or his colleague would be hung not 10, but 15 extra tons of some “unspecified” cargo: after all, appetites grow as their satisfaction. And the tragedy would have happened anyway - if not in this case, then in the next one, if its causes were preserved.

God grant that, as a result of this catastrophe, someone in our armed forces gives a proper blow to the brain, putting an end to the outrages that led to the inevitable outcome.

Alexander Roslyakov

At the same time, the version about a technical malfunction of the board that crashed over the Black Sea remains a priority.

The version of external or internal influence on the crashed aircraft of the Ministry of Defense Tu-154 is put forward by aviation experts - although the version of a technical malfunction of the board remains a priority now. Nevertheless, this tragedy reminded some experts of the disaster with the Boeing A321 over Sinai Peninsula.

The pilot, ex-commander of the Il-96, Sergei Knyshov, presented his view on the possible cause of the crash of the Tu-154, which fell into the Black Sea.

You see, planes don't just crash... Firstly, both the equipment and the pilots of the military department are among the best. Secondly, weather, as far as I know, were also good. Moreover, even if an abnormal situation arose on board, the PIC had to report it to the ground. -But it wasn't done. So, I just didn’t have time ... It’s very likely that something happened on board, because of which the pilots could not do what they were obliged to do, - the pilot told MK.

According to Sergey Knyshov, the features of an airport surrounded by the sea are also unlikely to be the cause of pilot error:

Despite the fact that the takeoff is at sea, this does not affect the accident rate in any way - it’s not the children who are sitting at the helm. Moreover, as far as I understand, the pilots flew this route not for the first time.

According to the expert, it is possible that there was an external impact or an explosion inside the cabin. The aircraft could be attacked from the shore from the same MANPADS (portable anti-aircraft missile system):

The plane was no more than five kilometers from the coast - the distance for MANPADS is sufficient. But there had to be a flash and witnesses who saw it, the pilot suggested.

As for the version about an explosive device on board the aircraft, it is necessary to find out which flights the aircraft made earlier, whether there was a possibility of such a “bookmark”.

In general, the whole situation with the Tu-154 strongly resembles the situation with the plane that crashed over the Sinai Peninsula in October 2015, the MK expert added. - Then, if you remember, they also started talking about the highway much later.

It must be emphasized once again that this is the private opinion of an expert - official sources now call the priority version of a technical malfunction of the board. There was information that before the crash, the Tu-154 allegedly turned 180 degrees. If these data are correct, then the plane was trying to return to Adler airport.

A special state commission should finally establish the causes of the tragedy. The search operation continues at the crash site.

FROM THE DOSIER "MK"

There were two major disasters at the Adler airport.

One of them happened in 1972. Aeroflot Il-18 flew to Moscow. At 19.22 the crew reported on the takeoff. The dispatcher transmitted the exit conditions - a right turn with a climb of up to 3000 m to Lazarevskoye. The crew confirmed receipt of instructions, after which communication with them ceased - the plane crashed into the sea about 10 km from the coast. 109 people died. The investigation put forward a number of versions of the disaster, including the failure of equipment, instruments and an attack on the crew. And as a priority, a collision of an aircraft with a flock of migratory birds was considered, since this was the period of their migration. However, the exact cause has not been established.

The second occurred on the night of May 2-3, 2006. Airbus airliner Armavia's A320-211 operated flight RNV967 on the Yerevan-Sochi route, but on approach to land at the airport, the aircraft crashed into the Black Sea and was completely destroyed. All 105 passengers and 8 crew members on board were killed. The cause of the accident was recognized as uncoordinated actions of the crew when trying to climb after receiving the dispatcher's command to go around.