Translated material
Accident in the dark
The cause of the An-12 crash near Chelyabinsk was a technical malfunction
Today the flight recorders of the An-12 transport aircraft that crashed on Monday evening near Chelyabinsk are to be delivered to Moscow. In the technical laboratory of the Interstate Aviation Committee (IAC), specialists will try to record data that recorded crew conversations and the operation of aircraft systems in the last minutes before the tragedy. For now, experts are only guessing about the causes of the disaster.An-12, owned by Moskovia Airlines, crashed at about eight o'clock in the evening on May 26, 12 minutes after takeoff from Balandino airport. Shortly before this, the plane arrived with cargo from Perm and, after unloading, took off empty for a new batch of cargo. Seven minutes after takeoff, the aircraft commander, Anatoly Serezhkin, reported smoke in the cockpit and requested an emergency landing. A few minutes later, aircraft 1257 disappeared from tracking radars. Rescuers discovered the wreckage of the crashed plane an hour later in the area of the village of Roshchino, 30 km from Chelyabinsk. All nine crew members were killed.
The flight recorders of the crashed An-12 were found at the crash site almost immediately. The aircraft was equipped with the standard “black box” models for these airliners - MSRP-12 (parametric, which records data on the operation of on-board systems) and MS-61 (so-called speech, it is also called an “on-board tape recorder”, which records crew conversations) . The parametric recorder was thrown to the side during the accident, and outwardly it was almost undamaged. The voice recorder, according to preliminary data, suffered much more damage. In MS-61, information is recorded on a thin wire, which often breaks during a disaster, and its restoration is a long and painstaking work. In any case, the information from the “black boxes” will most likely form the basis of the investigation that will be conducted by IAC experts. When it fell, the An-12 shattered into small pieces, and the fire that broke out after hitting the ground (the tanks of the vehicle were almost full) completed the job. Accordingly, according to experts, studying the wreckage is unlikely to yield any results.
Experts yesterday preferred not to talk about the causes of the disaster. There are still many versions, but the main one is considered to be a technical malfunction. They called the version that the tragedy was caused by a collision with a power line (the An-12 tore down the wires when it fell) as unfounded. “This is more of a consequence than a cause,” the expert explained. - Apparently, the crew tried to make an emergency landing right on the field, and the plane simply caught the wires. Landing in the dark, using only your own spotlights, is a lottery, luck or luck. But wires have nothing to do with the disaster - compare the weight of the car and the thickness of the wire.”
It is still unclear what forced the pilots to make an emergency landing in the field. But, according to experts, insulation in the event of a fire in the cockpit produces “very unpleasant toxic smoke,” and then options are possible - from loss of control of the machine to “disabling” the pilots.
The crew of the liner was considered very experienced. Commander Anatoly Serezhkin was a 1st class instructor pilot with extensive flight hours. He recently came to Moscovia Airlines, and before that he worked at Atran Airlines. He left there shortly after the An-12 of this company crashed near Domodedovo Airport in July last year (the cause of the accident was birds getting into the engines).
The crashed An-12 was produced back in 1968, but had a fairly long service life (An-12s are generally considered very reliable machines). “The plane was operated by the company for about a month and was in fully operational condition,” said a Moscovia representative. -- It underwent all the necessary routine maintenance work on the eve of its transfer from the previous owner. According to the regulations, the next maintenance of the airliner was supposed to take place in August of this year.”
As the company said, the plane arrived in Chelyabinsk as a charter flight under a government contract. He returned to Perm for new cargo. Several more flights were to be flown as part of the contract. The company refused to disclose the nature of the cargo, calling it “state”, but did not deny that there were collectors on board during the flight to Chelyabinsk.
As the head of the government commission to investigate the causes of the disaster, Gennady Kurzenkov, said yesterday, “the flight work of Moscovia Airlines will be checked.” “In 2007, several accidents occurred with the airline’s aircraft,” he noted. -- We will strive to cut down companies that cannot ensure flight safety. There are 12 such companies in Russia. Before this disaster, Moscovia operated six aircraft.”