Another Tu-134 Craters

[Kanastrous]

MOSCOW — Forty-four people were killed when a passenger jet crashed late Monday in northwestern Russia, news agencies said.

RIA Novosti and ITAR-Tass, citing Emergencies Ministry officials, reported that the RusAir plane crash-landed on a highway en route from Moscow to the city of Petrozavodsk. They reported eight people who survived the crash were hospitalized in critical condition in Petrozavodsk.

There was no immediate explanation for the crash, but the Interfax news agency quoted the airport director Alexei Kuzmitsky as saying there were "unfavorable weather conditions."

Russian news agencies said the plane crashed on its final approach to the airport in Petrozavodsk, landing a few hundred yards (meters) short of the runway. Petrozavodsk is in the in the province of Karelia, 400 miles (640 kilometers) northwest of Moscow.

The plane was a Russian-made Tu-134 jet, the Emergencies Ministry said, carrying 52 people, nine of whom were crew, the news agencies said. They said Russian Premier League soccer referee Vladimir Pettay was among the victims. News agencies reported a Swedish victim along with Russians.

The ministry confirmed on its website that there had been an incident and posted a list of 43 passengers. The Karelia branch of the Emergencies Ministry said radio contact with the pilot was lost at 23:40 local time (7:30 p.m. EDT, 1940GMT). The black box flight data recorders had been recovered, the news agencies said.

Earlier reports put the death toll at 40.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/43472600/ns ... ws-europe/

I assume the rash of Tu-134 crashes is mostly thanks to short resources and poor maintenance of the aircraft and navigational/landing aids, right? Is anyone aware of any known fundamental flaws in the design?

[Sea Skimmer]

Nothing is really wrong with the plane other then questionable Soviet build quality, its just very old, the last one was produced in 1984 and the first in 1967 and they have been hard used with bad maintenance. That’s made worse by Russian runway surfaces and air traffic control being subpar. Only a small fraction of the large production run remain in service today and they are going away fairly quickly.

[K. A. Pital]

Serial production has been over for like, 27 years. Maintenance has been exceptionally bad in the 1990s, with almost no standards of parts replacement (people used fake documents + old parts, after boiling them in gasoline to make 'em look brand new). No wonder this happens, and no wonder I'm only travelling in Russia using trains.

The Tu-134 was a rather reliable plane, just like the Tu-154 - part of the problem is it's been exploited for too long.

P.S. Also, the airport switched off runway lights, which is a clear breach of procedure. Reason so far unknown, but if they find that it was the cause of the catastrophe... ugh.

[Kanastrous]

An update...

ST. PETERSBURG, Russia — An airliner crashed in heavy fog and burst into flames about a mile short of a runway in northwestern Russia, killing 44 people, officials said. Eight survivors were dragged from the burning wreckage by locals.

The Tupolev 134 plane, belonging to the RusAir airline, was en route from Moscow to the city of Petrozavodsk, Emergencies Ministry spokeswoman Oksana Semyonova said.

The plane's approach was too low, so it clipped a tree and then hit a high-power line — causing Besovets airport's runway lights to go off for 10 seconds — before slamming into the ground, said Sergei Izvolsky, a spokesman for the Russian air transport agency.

"Everything was on fire," a witness who declined to give his name told a television crew.

The emergencies ministry said 44 people were killed, including four with dual U.S. and Russian citizenship. Russian news agencies said Russian Premier League soccer referee Vladimir Pettay and a Swedish citizen were also among the victims.

Eight survivors, including a 10-year-old boy and a female flight attendant, were hospitalized.

"The child was in a very grave condition," a medical worker told local TV.

The federal air transport agency chief, Alexander Neradko, said that preliminary information indicated the plane appeared to be intact when hit a 49-foot pine tree. "There is no sign of a fire or explosion on board the plane before the impact," he said.

Pilot error was the most likely cause, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov said Tuesday.

Sergei Shmatkov, an air traffic controller who oversaw the plane's approach, was quoted by the lifenews.ru website as saying the visibility near the airport was close to the minimum admissible level at the time of the crash, but the pilot still decided to land.

"The crew continued their descent at a moment when they already should have begun a second run," he was quoted as saying.

Shmatkov said he ordered the crew to abort the landing the moment the runway lights went off, but it already was too late.

A video made by a witness on her cell phone showed flames soaring from the wreckage into the night sky and the plane's wheels lying upside down by the roadside.

"I managed to take a woman or a girl out of there, she was light," http://www.lifenews.ruquoted one witness as saying. He said he and his father had removed several more people before the plane blew up.

"I didn't have time to do anything else, it all started to explode," he said. "There was no way to get close."

Petrozavodsk is in Karelia province, near the Finnish border, about 400 miles northwest of Moscow.

The Tupolev 134, along with its larger sibling the Tu-154, has been the workhorse of Soviet and Russian civil aviation since the 1960s. The model that crashed was built in 1980, had a 68-person capacity and a range of about 1,240 miles.

The Karelia branch of the Emergencies Ministry said radio contact with the pilot was lost at 11:40 p.m. local time (3:40 p.m. ET). The black box flight data recorders have been recovered, the news agencies said.

The accident occurred on the eve of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's planned appearance Tuesday at the Paris Air Show to support dozens of Russian firms seeking sales contracts.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, who has swapped his Tupolev for a French-made executive jet, in April criticized flaws in domestically-built planes and the nation's poor safety record.

Russia and the other former Soviet republics have some of the world's worst air traffic safety records, according to the International Air Transport Association.

Experts blame weak government controls, poor pilot training and a cost-cutting mentality for the poor safety record, leading to emergency landings being reported with alarming regularity.

Polish President Lech Kaczynski was among 96 people killed when his Tu-154 crashed in heavy fog while trying to land near the western city of Smolensk in April 2010. In 2006, three crashes — two in Russia and one in Ukraine — killed more than 400 people.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/43472600/ns ... ws-europe/


- this report seems to suggest that the runway lights cut out as a result of the aircraft severing power lines on the way down...

[Phantasee]

Shouldn't runway lights have some kind of back up? A UPS?

[Broomstick]

They should, but they don't always, and even when they do such back up systems can malfunction. If you're coming in for a landing under those conditions and the runway lights go out you probably should go to full throttle either circle for another landing or divert to some place with power, because if the runway lights are out it's like the nav aids are, too - which is exactly why air traffic control told them to do a go-around.

Based on what has been reported (which all all know may change with more information) this was not the fault of maintenance (or lack of it) or some mechanical issue - it really does appear to be pilot error. They came in too low in poor visibility. That's the pilots' fault. That's why they hit the tree and the powerline, and that's why they crashed.

[Kanastrous]

The fact that the lights were only reportedly out for 10 seconds suggests that there was a backup power source that they switched to, anyway...

[Broomstick]

True. However, 10 seconds outage is too long - even if they still intended to land, if they're on final approach and the power goes out a go-around might be the best course of action. You must be able to see that runway for the final few meters of descent, you have to or you will crash. You shouldn't wait for ATC to call for the go-round, you should just do it - they'll understand why.

Yes, there are systems that can "autoland" an aircraft - I'm also guessing they've never been installed on aircraft that old, and they are also dependent on the airport have the necessary complementary equipment - and if the power goes out, so does that equipment, leaving you with Eyeball Mark I and needing to see the runway.

[folti78]

My guess, they only have UPS for the core infrastructure(radars, comms, ATC, coffee machine, etc), everything else have to wait 'till the backup diesels kick in. Petrozavodsk Airport is a small dual use airport used for domestic civilian flights and home base of a Russian Air Force interceptor regiment. It's more than likely that it's ran by the military, using mostly military equipment, subject to their own regulations.

[Kanastrous]

Would it be correct to assume that the military and civilian navigation and landing systems are not entirely interoperable?

[Broomstick]

I don't know how it is in Russia, but in North America there actually is some considerable overlap. Perhaps it is best to say that the military has a few options the civilians don't, but largely they use the same ones when operating at the same airport. As an example, originally only the military had GPS. That has since been opened up to civilians, although the military still has access to a better and more accurate signal.

Talking to Wicked Pilot in the past, he was using the same sort of nav aids either at airports or en route that a civilian pilot such as myself would use, and he's flown all over the world.

Based on that, I'd say that yes, your assumption is likely in error.