Armavia Flight 967

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Armavia Flight 967
Armavia Airbus A320 Misko-1.jpg

The crashed plane three days before the accident
Accident summary
Accident type Controlled flight into water
place Black Sea , near Adler , RussiaRussiaRussia 
date May 3, 2006
Fatalities 113
Survivors 0
Aircraft
Aircraft type EuropeEurope Airbus A320-211
operator ArmeniaArmenia Armavia
Mark ArmeniaArmenia EK-32009
Surname Mesrop Mashtots
Departure airport Yerevan Airport , ArmeniaArmeniaArmenia 
Destination airport Sochi Airport , RussiaRussiaRussia 
Passengers 105
crew 8th
Lists of aviation accidents

The Armavia Flight 967 (flight number IATA : U8967 , ICAO : RNV967 ) was a scheduled night flight of the Armenian airline Armavia from Yerevan to Sochi . On May 3, 2006, an Airbus A320-211 (EK-32009) accident occurred on this flight , in which all 113 people on board were killed.

plane

The aircraft involved in the accident was an Airbus A320-200, which was 10 years and 9 months old at the time of the accident. It was the 547th Airbus A320 from ongoing production. The aircraft was finally assembled at the Airbus plant in Toulouse , France, and completed its maiden flight on June 28, 1995, before being delivered to Ansett Australia on August 30, 1995 . The machine was initially approved with the aircraft registration VH-HYO . With the insolvency of Ansett Australia, the machine was taken out of service on September 14, 2001. On February 6, 2004, the Airbus with the new aircraft registration EK-32009 was registered on the Armavia , which gave it the name Mesrop Mashtots . The twin -engined , narrow -body aircraft was equipped with two CFMI-CFM56-5A1 engines. At the time of the accident, the machine had completed a cumulative operating performance of 28,234 operating hours with 14,376 take-offs and landings.

On May 3, 2005, the machine was overhauled at Lufthansa Technik in Budapest and since then had completed 2533 operating hours with 929 flight cycles. The last maintenance was carried out on the day before the accident at Sabena Technics .

According to the then chairman of Armavia, Andrej Nikitin, the machine was leased from Vermeille International Services BV , based in Amsterdam . In the course of the aircraft accident investigation, however, the company Funnel of George Town , based on the Cayman Islands, was identified as the lessor . The machine was painted in October 2004 in the Netherlands according to the new color design of the Armavia, which should represent the colors of the Armenian flag.

Passengers and crew

There were 105 passengers on board, including five children and an infant.

Inmates' nationalities
nationality Passengers crew total
ArmeniaArmenia Armenia 77 8th 85
RussiaRussia Russia 26th 0 26th
GeorgiaGeorgia Georgia 1 0 1
UkraineUkraine Ukraine 1 0 1
Total 105 8th 113

The flight captain Grigor Grigorjan, born in 1966, first acquired a license to pilot an Antonov An-2 at the Krasnokutsk flight school in 1986 , on which he was then employed from August 1986 to May 1990 in the rank of first officer. He was then employed as the first officer in the cockpit of a Yakovlev Jak-40 , before he was promoted to the rank of captain after graduating from the Moscow Institute for Civil Aviation. From May 19, 2004 he was deployed as first officer on board Armavia's Airbus A320, and from September 1, 2005 as its captain. The captain had 5458 hours of flight experience, 1436 hours of which with the Airbus A320 and of which 566 hours were in the rank of captain.

First officer Arman Dawtian, born in 1977, acquired his pilot's license in 1999 at the Ulyanovsk flight school and initially had a type rating for the Tupolev Tu-154 , in whose cockpit he was used from June 1999 to January 2003, most recently in service with Armenian Airlines . From February 26, 2004 this airline used him as co-pilot of the ATR 72 . From July to September 2004 he completed a training course to pilot the Airbus A320 at the SAS Flight Academy in Stockholm and since October 2004 has been the first officer in the cockpit of this aircraft type at Armavia. The first officer had 2185 hours of flight experience, 1022 of which with the Airbus A320.

In addition, six other crew members were on board, the technician Nikolai Kascharjan and the five flight attendants Mariana Hasratjan, Lusine Geworgjan, Anaida Abeljan, Rostislav Schelemetew and Armen Haroutunjan.

Flight history

The overnight flight from Yerevan Airport to Sochi was scheduled to depart at 8:45 p.m. UTC (00:45 a.m. local time). The aircraft finally took off at 20:47 UTC, take-off and climb took place without any particular incident. At 21:10 UTC, contact was first made with approach control in Sochi. The air traffic controller reported poor weather conditions on site to the crew. At 9:26 p.m., the pilots discussed a possible return to Yerevan Airport. Having already decided to turn back, they asked again about the weather. The air traffic controller informed the crew that visibility was 3600 meters and that the cloud cover was at a height of 170 meters. The pilots then decided to continue the flight to Sochi.

During the approach to Sochi at 10:00 p.m. UTC (02:00 a.m. local time), the pilots made contact with air traffic control again. This gave them the clearance to drop from their altitude of 3600 meters to 1800 meters and informed the pilots about the weather conditions in the area of ​​runway 06 intended for the aircraft. The weather conditions were above the minimum weather requirements of the airport. The air traffic controller gave clearance to descend to 600 meters and forwarded the flight 967 crew to the landing control controller.

the accident

At 10:10 p.m. UTC, the crew reported to air traffic control and announced that they were preparing the landing. The landing gear has been extended. The air traffic controller announced that visibility was 4,000 meters and the cloud cover was 190 meters above the ground. Only 30 seconds later the controller reported again and said that the cloud cover was now 100 meters above the ground. The pilots were instructed to make a missed approach , to fly into a right-hand holding pattern and to climb to 600 meters. At this point the machine was flying at an altitude of 390 meters.

From 22:12:34 UTC, the Airbus crew no longer answered radio messages from air traffic control. At 10:13:02 p.m. UTC (2:13:02 a.m. local time), the machine disappeared from the radar. Just a second later, the Airbus hit the water 6 km off the coast of Adler and broke apart. All 113 people on board were killed.

Salvage

After the machine disappeared from the radar, the Russian Ministry of Disaster Control was alerted at 02:19 a.m. The rescue workers started the search. At 4:05 a.m. local time, the rescue teams pulled aircraft debris and life jackets out of the water. Later they sighted parts of the trunk, body parts, luggage and a kerosene carpet in the water.

A Mi-8 helicopter that was sent to search for the machine had to wait for take-off clearance due to the deteriorating weather. The search was initially suspended. At 4:08 a.m., the civil protection boat Valery Zamarayez discovered the alleged crash area. Between 7:30 a.m. and 12:30 p.m., the rescue teams recovered nine body parts from the sea.

The rescue teams were only able to salvage part of the aircraft debris. The aircraft nose, landing gear, horizontal and vertical tail and some other debris from the Airbus were recovered, as well as cables and electronic assemblies. The lower part of the rudder was badly damaged due to the forces acting on the impact, as was parts of the tail unit. In addition, a total of 52 body parts were recovered. The flight data recorder could also be recovered. They were only slightly damaged and were examined by the Bureau d'Enquêtes et d'Analyses pour la sécurité de l'aviation civile (BEA).

Accident investigation

In the course of the rescue operation, the civil protection ministry announced that the machine had hit the water with a roll angle of 60 degrees. While the rescue work was still in progress, BEA investigators were able to determine that the landing gear was extended when the machine hit.

The accident was investigated by the Interstate Aviation Committee (MAK), which was supported by the BEA.

On July 25, 2006, it was announced that the accident had been caused by "inappropriate actions by the aircraft commander". After the crew had received the instruction to carry out the missed approach, they did not follow the standard procedures for climbing an Airbus A320. Evaluations of the voice recorder showed that the master was exposed to high psychological stress during the approach. Among other things, this was suggested by a remark by Grigoryan shortly after take-off from Yerevan, in which he cursed and complained about the absurdity of flying when there was a lack of sleep. This suggests that the captain himself was overtired at this point and thus possibly restricted in his fitness to fly. Both pilots reacted impulsively on the final approach. When it started to rain, the first officer cursed. When the air traffic controller instructed the crew to hold a hold, the pilots also responded with expletives. The crew discussed it for three minutes and even cursed while going through the checklist between the individual items.

A few minutes later the "Speed ​​Speed ​​Speed" warning sounded, advising the crew that the engine's thrust had to be increased in order to keep the machine along the flight path. At this point the machine was at an altitude of 1,150 feet (approximately 350 meters). The pilots then pressed the TO / GA button (go- around ).

Inconsistent control inputs were made while the aircraft was being flown on approach with the autopilot active. When evaluating the flight data recorder recordings, the investigators got the impression that neither of the two pilots in the cockpit had really understood how the autopilot worked. Although the autopilot was in "HDG" mode (heading), which is intended to maintain a preset course, the machine was steered to the right and the "OPEN CLIMB" mode selected. In addition, the Airbus was in landing configuration until the end, the landing gear was extended, and the automatic thrust system received the command to hold the thrust. The autopilot was only switched off shortly before the impact, with Captain Grigorjan steering the machine to the right.

The investigators suspected that the accident could be caused by a hallucination of the pilots. During the nocturnal approach, due to the lack of optical reference points, they could have had the impression that the aircraft was climbing, although this was not the case. Another Airbus A320 was flown into the sea on Gulf Air Flight 072 in 2000 under similar circumstances . Another thesis was that the pilots were irritated by the speed displays in the cockpit. For these, the border areas were shown by red bars. As part of his training, one of the pilots could have developed the reflex to instinctively push the control column forward in stressful situations in order to suppress the red bars from being displayed. None of the theses could be proven beyond doubt.

meaning

At the time of the accident, it was the second most serious incident involving an Airbus A320. As of July 2019, the incident is the fifth most serious worldwide involving this type of aircraft.

As of July 2019, it is the worst incident in Armenian aviation history. For Armavia, founded in 1996 and disbanded in 2013, it was the only fatal incident. It was also the third fatal aircraft accident and to date (as of July 2019) the most serious in the vicinity of Sochi airport, which in terms of the number of victims even exceeds the crash of an Ilyushin Il-18 on Aeroflot flight 1036 .

Web links

Coordinates: 43 ° 23 ′ 51 ″  N , 39 ° 51 ′ 27 ″  E