Azerbaijan Airlines Flight 217 Mar.

Azerbaijan Airlines Flight 217 Mar.
An Antonov An-140 aircraft
Accident summary
Accident type	Loss of control after instrument failure
place	Caspian Sea , near Nardaran , Azerbaijan
date	December 23, 2005
Fatalities	23
Survivors	0
Aircraft
Aircraft type	Antonov An-140
operator	Azerbaijan Airlines
Mark	4K-AZ48
Surname	Yevlakh
Departure airport	Baku Airport , Azerbaijan
Destination airport	Aqtau Airport , Kazakhstan
Passengers	18th
crew	5
Lists of aviation accidents

On December 23, 2005, an Antonov An-140-100 belonging to the national airline Azerbaijan Airlines had an accident on Azerbaijan Airlines flight 217 (flight number IATA : J2217 , ICAO : AHY217 ) after an instrument failure . All 23 people were killed on board the machine. The accident was caused by the failure of counterfeit aircraft parts.

plane

The machine concerned was an Antonov An-140-100 made in Ukraine . The An-140 was Antonov's first post-Soviet aircraft type ; its development began in 1993 and the model entered service with various airlines from 2002. It was intended to succeed the popular, but aging, Antonov An-24 .

The machine was finally assembled in 2004 and had the work number 36525307036 . On November 2, it went into service with Azerbaijan Airlines with the aircraft registration 4K-AZ48 and the name Yevlakh . It was the first machine of this type to be delivered to the airline and the ninth An-140 made in Ukraine from ongoing production. The twin-engine short-range passenger aircraft was equipped with two turbo-prop type Klimov Tv3-117 VMA SBM1 equipped.

Passengers and crew

The late evening flight from the Azerbaijani capital Baku to the coastal city of Aqtau in western Kazakhstan had taken 18 passengers. There was a crew of five on board the Antonov An-140.

Weather

At 10:30 p.m. local time, temperatures of +8 ° C with light rain prevailed at Baku Airport . The visibility on a moonless night was 3000 meters, the wind was blowing from 300 ° at a speed of one meter per second at a height of 600 meters of the cloud cover.

the accident

During flight preparation and taxiing for take-off, the cockpit crew deviated from the recommendations of the flight manual of the Antonov An-140 and the prescribed procedures of Azerbaijan Airlines. This meant that individual work steps were omitted, and a sequence of steps resulted that did not correspond to the operating regulations. Most of these operational changes were of a technical nature and had no effect on the subsequent accident. The plane took off from Baku Airport at around 10:40 p.m. in difficult weather conditions. Less than five minutes after take-off, the captain reported a problem with the engine. One after the other, all the artificial horizons failed. Due to the technical malfunction, the pilots had difficulties informing air traffic control of the position of the machine. The pilots returned to Baku to make an emergency landing at the airport there. Due to spatial disorientation due to the lack of visual reference points at night, they lost control of the machine. The An-140 crashed into the Caspian Sea off the coast of Nardaran . All 23 people on board were killed.

Accident investigation

The Intergovernmental Aviation Committee investigated the incident. It was found that all three artificial horizons , which ran independently of each other, blocked 42 seconds after take-off. This knowledge resulted from the evaluation of the flight data recorder. The data showed that the roll and pitch angles of the machine on the displays had not changed during the entire flight and were close to zero, which did not correspond to the actual course of the flight. On the moonless night in difficult weather, the pilots could hardly correctly assess the roll and pitch angles of the aircraft after the system failure.

Three minutes after the crew had reported the emergency situation, the machine had entered a right downward flat spin and fell from a height of 2000 meters at a vertical speed of 100 meters per second and a displayed speed of 600 km / h. The roll angle increased from 34 degrees to 60 degrees. After the machine had flown three and a half revolutions, it hit the surface of the Caspian Sea, near the north coast of the Abşeron Peninsula . Some of the debris fell into the sea, others were scattered over a two-kilometer stretch of beach and surf.

The gyroscope failure was caused by a malfunction in the locking mechanism of these components. The defect was traced back to the installation of counterfeit aircraft parts ex works. A forgery of passport data on components of the crashed machine was found. During the investigation of the airline's other machines, counterfeit components were also discovered in the An-140-100 with the aircraft registration number 4K-AZ49 of Azerbaijan Airlines.

consequences

The Commission of Inquiry recommended creating a state system that excludes the use of counterfeit units and products in aircraft, as well as the forgery of passport data. Components that did not meet the standards were also discovered in Ilyushin Il-76 machines in 2001 and 2004. At that time, measures to exclude such components were already recommended and introduced - these measures were apparently inadequate.

As a result of the incident, Azerbaijan Airlines took their remaining Antonov An-140 out of service and canceled ongoing orders for further machines of this type. This stopped the delivery of two further An-140s, which should go into operation as 4K-AZ50 and 4K-AZ51.

The sister machine An-140-100 with the aircraft registration 4K-AZ49 and the name Lankaran , in which counterfeit components were also discovered, was immediately taken out of service and stored in Baku. On December 3, 2008, the machine was returned to the manufacturer after the counterfeit components had been replaced. In December 2009 the machine was sold to the Ukrainian UkrTrans Leasing .

The 4K-AZ50 Zaqatala machine planned for delivery to Azerbaijan Airlines was stored at the manufacturer in Kharkiv . At first no customer could be found, the machine was finally sold to UkrTrans Leasing in December 2009 together with the 4K-AZ49 . It was assumed that UkrTrans Leasing sold the two aircraft to Yakutia Airlines , which also operated machines of this type. Nothing is known about the whereabouts of the two specimens.

For the Ukrainian manufacturer, the crash of Azerbaijan Airlines Flight 217 meant the end of production. The 4K-AZ50 machine was the last to be finalized in Ukraine. At Aviakor in Samara , Russia , in addition to the An-140, which was first built in 2005, two more units were finally assembled in 2007 and 2009, with all machines going to Yakutia Airlines as the only Russian customer, which shut down its last An-140 in 2015 . At the Iran Aircraft Manufacturing Industrial Company ( HESA-IRan ) in Isfahan , the assembly of the model continued until 2011. After the crash on Sepahan Airlines flight 5915 in 2014, the An-140 was banned from operating in Iran.

In March 2020, the Iranian police and the Ukrainian Motor Sich Airlines were the only operators that each still have a copy of the Antonov An-140 in use. With only 35 machines manufactured at all three production sites, the Antonov An-140 became a commercial failure.

swell

• David Kaminski-Morrow: Crashed An-140 had gyro failure , flightglobal.com, January 10, 2006.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} Accident report An-140, 4K-AZ48 in the Aviation Safety Network (English), accessed on March 25, 2020.
2. ↑ Company history An-140-100, 4K-AZ48 on russianplanes.net (Russian)
3. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g} accident report on airdisaster.ru (Russian), accessed on March 25, 2020.
4. ^ Azerbaijan Airlines grounds remaining An-140 after crash , Flightglobal , December 28, 2005.
5. ↑ Company history An-140-100, 4K-AZ51 on russianplanes.net (Russian)
6. ↑ ^{a b} Company history An-140-100, 4K-AZ49 on russianplanes.net (Russian)
7. ↑ ^{a b} Company history An-140-100, 4K-AZ50 on russianplanes.net (Russian)
8. ↑ ^{a b c d} production list of the An-140 on russianplanes.net (Russian)

Coordinates: 40 ° 33 ′ 22 ″  N , 50 ° 0 ′ 20 ″  E