Air accident near Leningrad in 1974

Air accident near Leningrad in 1974
	Aeroflot aircraft of the same construction
Accident summary
Accident type	Uncontrolled engine damage, structural failure
place	2.5 km east of Leningrad Airport
date	April 27, 1974
Fatalities	109
Survivors	0
Aircraft
Aircraft type	Ilyushin Il-18 W.
operator	Aeroflot
Mark	CCCP-75559
Departure airport	Leningrad Airport
Stopover	Zaporizhia airport
Destination airport	Krasnodar airport
Passengers	102
crew	7th
	Lists of aviation accidents

On April 27, 1974, an Ilyushin Il-18 crashed on a charter domestic flight of Aeroflot from Leningrad via Zaporizhia to Krasnodar , killing all 109 occupants.

Plane and crew

The aircraft was a 10-year-old Ilyushin Il-18W ( aircraft registration: CCCP-75559, serial number : 184007703), which was equipped with 4 turbo -prop engines of the type Ivchenko AI-20 K and was used from October 15, 1964. In total, she had completed 7501 flight cycles and 18358 flight hours before the accident.

The crew consisted of a flight captain , a first officer , a flight engineer , a navigator , a radio operator and 2 flight attendants .

course

At 6:09 p.m. the aircraft accelerated on course 279 ° to take off. One minute later, the captain reported the take-off and received the instructions for departure, which he in turn confirmed. About 2 min 30 s after take-off, while the Il-18 was flying the first intended curve, the master reported that engine no.4 (far right) was on fire and there were vibrations , which meant that it was necessary to turn around, whereupon the master continued to fly the curve . Shortly afterwards, while the Il-18 was in a second turn, the master reported that the propeller of engine no. 4 was in the sail position. At the beginning of the following 3rd bend, the master requested a fire engine and at the end of the bend reported that engine no. 4 was burning. After the 4th turn, the Il-18 sank with the landing gear extended and the flaps extended by 30 ° on the correct course on the glide path . In the final approach , about 2.5 km before the runway threshold , the aircraft leaned down and rolled to right until it comes to 18:07:24 PM, with no pitch and tilted with the nose 60 degrees down, opened. The crash site was in a field near a railway line ; the rubble was distributed within a radius of 30 m .

Investigations

It turned out that the pilots saved time when attempting the emergency landing by completing the turns faster than normal and by flying at an altitude of 400 instead of 600 m and thus flying 7 min 16 s instead of 12 to 14 min, and doing so adhered to the flight manual . Weather was not given any importance as a factor. The third compressor disc was missing in engine no. Parts of it were found in the area of the 1st curve. In addition, holes were found on the engine cowling, as well as small burned engine parts and parts of the landing flaps along the flight path. The compressor disc broke apart due to a fatigue crack, whereupon the debris severed fuel lines and thus led to the fire, which was observed by eyewitnesses. The first stage of the engine extinguishing system was triggered automatically , but the second stage did not work. The fire then spread and eventually burned away part of the flaps on the right side when the aircraft was on final approach. The aerodynamic forces drove in the rest, causing a rolling movement that could not be counteracted with the control horn , which led to a crash. There is disagreement about the cause of the disk failure. The GosNII GA came to the conclusion that the pane broke due to the poor quality of the material and the increased temperatures during use. The ZIAM , WIAM, LII and P / JA G-4561, on the other hand, came to the conclusion that there was material fatigue on the windshield due to increased engine power used and the associated overheating as well as inadequate repairs.

Commemoration

A memorial for the victims was finally erected near the crash site.

Sources and web links

59.798056 30.341111Coordinates: 59 ° 47 ′ 53 ″ N , 30 ° 20 ′ 28 ″ E