Specialists of the Interstate Aviation Committee have named the preliminary reason for the crash of the An-148, which crashed last Sunday near Moscow. According to experts, the disaster occurred due to the failure of the full pressure receivers, which did not turn on due to icing. The IAC employees came to this conclusion after they completed the decoding of the data of the An-148 parametric recorder.
According to the IAC, a "special situation" began to develop on board the airliner about two and a half minutes after takeoff, at an altitude of about 1300 meters and a speed of 465-470 km / h.
At that moment, there were discrepancies in the speed readings from MEP1 (air parameters module) (PPD1) of the left pilot and MEP3 (PPD3, reserve). After another 30 seconds, the discrepancy reached about 30 km / h. After that, a one-time command to the crew "Instrument - compare" appeared. The command was repeated at an altitude of about 2000 meters, this time the discrepancies between the readings of the sensors increased.
The crew turned off the autopilot after the second command "Instrument - compare". Further, the flight took place in manual mode. The speed readings varied greatly: on one air parameters module, 0 km / h was noted, on the other - 540-560 km / h. After that, the speed readings of the latter dropped sharply (up to 200 km / h and below). The aircraft was transferred to an intensive descent with an angular dive movement of 30-35 degrees. Before hitting the ground, the readings of one of the modules remained zero, the second - 800 km / h. “4-5 seconds before the collision, the aircraft began to develop the right roll, which reached 25 degrees,” the IAC reported. Six minutes after takeoff, An-148 collided with the ground.
As the experts of the committee told reporters, a preliminary analysis showed that
the crash could have happened due to incorrect flight speed data. The instrument error was most likely associated with "icing of the RPM (full pressure receivers) when their heating systems are off".
Recall that the An-148 of Saratov Airlines, which was operating a flight on the Moscow - Orsk route, crashed a few minutes after takeoff from Domodedovo; there were 65 passengers and six crew members... They all died.
Former Minister of Civil Aviation of the USSR, Honored Pilot of the USSR, believes that the decryption data of the "black box" seriously narrowed the list of possible versions of the tragedy. “If we focus on the information provided by the IAC, the picture emerges as follows: the heating of all full pressure receivers was off. This means that when the plane took off, the instruments showed that the plane's speed was not increasing. Consequently, the crew commander proceeded from this information of the instruments and, probably, began to increase the engine power. So he kept increasing and increasing it, actually switching the engines to takeoff mode, ”the expert says in a conversation with Gazeta.Ru.
According to the former Minister of Civil Aviation of the USSR, in take-off mode the aircraft engines can operate for a very limited time, then their destruction occurs.
“The question is why the heating of the full pressure receivers did not work. Either the pilots didn't turn it on, or they turned it on, but they didn't work. The full picture should become clear after decoding the second "black box", where the negotiations of the crew members are recorded, "
- concluded Smirnov.
As stated on the IAC website, the experts of the committee had to completely disassemble both "black boxes" to decipher the information that is stored there. “We have successfully copied all the information of the onboard parametric recorder. There is a record of 16 flights, including one that ended in disaster. Experts have begun to decipher the recording, ”the committee said.
It also indicated that representatives of the IAC held negotiations with the Authorized Representative of the National Bureau for the Investigation of Aviation Accidents of Ukraine, since this state is the developer of the An-148 aircraft and its components. “At the moment, the Commission of Inquiry is awaiting a decision by the Ukrainian side on the date of arrival and the composition of the group of specialists from Ukraine,” the IAC notes.
The IAC report about problems in the operation of full pressure receivers was also commented on by the Investigative Committee. As the official representative of the department told reporters, “the investigation will consider this information in conjunction with other materials of the criminal case being processed by the Investigative Committee of Russia. The version of the IAC specialists will be checked along with others ”. After the crash of the An-148, he opened a criminal case under Part 3 of Article 263 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (violation of traffic safety rules and the operation of air transport, resulting in the death of two or more persons by negligence).
Earlier, a number of media outlets, citing eyewitnesses to the tragedy, reported that an explosion probably took place on board the crashed An-148, as the crash was preceded by a “strong clap”. Some experts also put forward the version that since the crew did not have time to report to the ground about an emergency situation, then something sudden happened on board the liner, for example, an explosion or a strong fire. However, the day before, Svetlana Petrenko made a statement, from which it follows that the An-148 before colliding with the ground was in its entirety and fell to pieces after the fall, which ruled out an explosion on board.
A source close to the investigation told Gazeta.Ru that the version of the explosion is not being considered at the moment. “By the scattering of the debris it is already clear that there was no destruction in the air,” the source told Gazeta.Ru. According to him, since now a version has appeared about a malfunction of the full pressure receivers, then the versions associated with this circumstance will be tested first. “It depends on the moment at which the signal passed. When this is analyzed, it will become clear whether the heating of the total pressure receivers has been turned on or not. It is also possible that the Human Factors version will be considered. The pilots could hurry, hurry. Especially,
there is information that Saratov Airlines often had flight delays. This race could lead to something being forgotten to include.
The second recorder will allow you to listen to whether it happened or not, ”the source said.
Note that it was the icing of the full pressure receivers, according to the official version, that led to the crash air plane France over the Atlantic on June 1, 2009. Then all 228 people on board the liner died. As established by the commission investigating the circumstances of the tragedy, during the flight, a component of the receiver - the Pitot tube - froze, which led to the failure of the autopilot, the mismatch of the crew's actions and the stalling of the aircraft, from which the pilots could not take it out.
The An-148 that fell in the Moscow Region was manufactured in 2010 by order of the Rossiya State Transport Company; it made its first regular flight on June 26, 2010. In 2015-2017, this aircraft was in storage due to a lack of spare parts. Since February of last year, the airliner has been operated by Saratov Airlines. It is reported that the aircraft was operated with violations. In November 2017, within a month, the airline was checked, during which the following problems were revealed: the frequency of changing the oil in the gearboxes and flushing the air starter filter was violated. This must be done after 375 flight hours, but in fact the work was carried out at a frequency of 750 hours. At the same time, the head of the press service of Saratov Airlines stressed that there were no complaints about the technical condition of the An-148 aircraft, which crashed in the suburbs.
Saratov Airlines decided to temporarily suspend the operation of An-148, of which the company now has 10 left. This will create problems for those who need to fly from Moscow to Orsk in the near future, since regular flights only two companies operate there - except for Saratov Airlines, this is done by the German Hahn Air Systems. As the press service of Saratov Airlines told reporters, the first few days after the tragedy, Izhavia planes will fly to Orsk instead, and then the company will return to servicing this route. Only, not An-148, but Embraer machines will fly to Orsk.
The preliminary conclusions of the Interstate Aviation Committee on the causes of the An-148 crash in the Moscow region have become known. On Tuesday, February 13, IAC specialists completed the decoding of the parametric flight recorder from the An-148. The one who fixes the readings of the equipment in flight, writes KP.RU.
The cause of the crash, most likely, was the pilots' misconception about the speed of the aircraft.
STARTED TO DESTRUCT STILL IN THE AIR ...
The commission of the IAC preliminarily established that the heating of all three air receivers of full pressure was off, ”the Honored Pilot of the USSR, former Deputy Minister, told Radio Komsomolskaya Pravda (97.2 FM in Moscow) Civil Aviation USSR Oleg Smirnov.
The total pressure receiver is such a small "peak" on the fuselage. The device determines the atmospheric pressure and the speed of air movement - that is, the flight speed. The data is transmitted to the pilots' dashboard. Moreover, both the commander and the co-pilot have sensors (they are the same as speedometers in cars, with arrows). The heating of the receivers is switched on manually (see “Expert commentary”).
And so the plane with the receiver heating turned off went for acceleration and took off from the ground ...
The receivers are clogged with snow, plus the plane was crossing the clouds at the time of the rise, this also added, - continues Smirnov. - The receivers began to send incorrect speed signals to the cockpit, "lowering" the speed. Pilots in the clouds do not see anything, they are guided by the instruments, so they add speed, add engine mode. As a result, the crew set the engines so hot that they began to collapse in flight. At an altitude of 1,300 meters, the plane flew at a speed of 600 kilometers per hour. At this altitude and at this speed, fighters fly, but not civilian aircraft. It's overload!
The IAC believes that the pilots, trying to catch up with speed, accelerated the board to exorbitant values. This led to increased vibration - flutter, the plane began to collapse while still in the air. This, incidentally, may explain the large radius of the debris spread.
THE AIRPLANE ENTERED THE GROUND AT A SPEED OF 800 KM / H
So far, the IAC has decoded only the parametric recorder. Speech is being prepared for copying.
It is still difficult to assess the overall picture of what happened, - continues Smirnov. - For example, it is not yet clear why, when approaching the ground, when it was already visible visually, the pilots did not try to avoid the impact. According to the IAC, "An" at a speed of 800 kilometers per hour entered the ground with a roll of 25 degrees and an angle of 30 degrees. In fact, it was a dive. Why did they sit like that? I believe that after leaving the clouds there was still a chance to make a hard landing and save some of the people. But - alas - we do not yet know in detail what was happening in the cockpit, whether at that moment they had the technical ability to reduce the angle of incidence.
There are a lot of oddities. Remember the Yak-40 disaster in Yaroslavl, where the Lokomotiv hockey team died? The IAC established that during takeoff, one of the pilots pressed the brake for some reason. In the story with the An-148, could there be some kind of inconsistency between the crew members?
I could. Because the parametric recorder records the readings of the crew commander's speed sensor only. What the co-pilot saw at that moment, we cannot yet know. This will become clear when specialists decipher the speech recorder and superimpose the sound on the readings of the instruments.
SPECIALIST COMMENT
On foreign aircraft, heating turns on automatically
Why didn't the pilots turn on the heating of the air pressure receivers? Most likely, they just forgot ...
During the Soviet era, this was a very common problem, ”Oleg Prikhodko, vice president of the flight personnel union, told KP. - Very often the pilots forgot to turn it on. Because it must be done just before takeoff, in about 5 minutes. And at this moment the pilot has so many things to do that it can go out of his head. After all, this is a small inconspicuous switch at the very top of the panel. On foreign aircraft - on Boeings and Airbuses - you can also forget to turn on the heating of air pressure receivers. But there it will still turn on automatically. And here ... Earlier, even in Soviet times, some planes were specially modified, made so that the heater would turn on automatically. And here is a relatively new plane without this important option! Yes, this is an anachronism, I think, such planes cannot be accepted into operation either. But now, naturally, the pilots will be blamed for everything ...
AT THIS TIME
Other crews had similar problems in a week
It is noteworthy that problems with speed sensors during the last snowfalls were not recorded for the first time. On February 12, even before the An-148 “black boxes” were found, Rosaviatsia circulated a letter demanding that attention be paid to icing of pressure receivers. The letter states that on February 4-5, during heavy snowfall, seven incidents were recorded related to incorrect speed readings on RRJ-95B aircraft (this is Sukhoi-Superjet). All incidents occurred at the initial stage of the flight, and in all cases the crews made a decision to return to the airfield. "According to preliminary data, after inspections of the aircraft, ice deposits were found on the fuselage in front of the air pressure receiver," the letter says to the Federal Air Transport Agency.
What is the connection between the An-148 disaster and the incidents with seven Super-jets? Since these are conventionally domestically produced liners, it is possible that the systems for measuring speed and protecting it from adverse weather conditions are similar. At least a similar disaster of the An-148 during a training flight on March 9, 2011, according to some reports, also occurred due to incorrect readings of the speed sensor. Then the pilots also dispersed the plane, and it collapsed in the air. Then 6 crew members were killed.
OFFICIALLY
The data of the preliminary analysis of the flight recorder data were obtained by the Investigative Committee of Russia, - Svetlana Petrenko, the official representative of the ICR, told KP. - In accordance with the assumptions of the representatives of the IAC, a factor in the development of a special situation in flight could be incorrect data on the flight speed on the pilots' indicators, which in turn, apparently, was associated with icing of the full pressure receivers when their heating systems were off. The investigation will consider these data in conjunction with other materials of the criminal case, the version of the IAC specialists will be checked along with others.
BTW
Who inspects aircraft before take off?
According to Oleg Prikhodko, vice-president of the flight personnel union, everything depends on the agreement concluded between the airport and the airline. If the airport has its own technical services, it could be them. If not, then the airport engineers.
In this case, the airline's own technicians were on board, so they most likely carried out the main inspection, - says Oleg Prikhodko. - But nevertheless, Domodedovo technicians still conduct a small inspection and give the go-ahead for takeoff. True, the fact that the heating of the air pressure receivers is not turned on is impossible to understand from the outside. But if there was ice on them at the airfield, they should have seen it.
BETWEEN
Could the debris of the An-148 have scattered within a radius of a kilometer, if the explosion happened only after the fall
In the story of the crash of the passenger An-148 in the Moscow region, the version of the terrorist attack was rejected almost immediately. At first it was reported that no traces of explosives were found on the fragments of the aircraft found. Then an official statement was made by investigative committee (and about a hundred members of the UK are now involved in the investigation): "It has been established that at the time of the fall, the aircraft was intact, without fire, the explosion occurred after the plane crashed." Nevertheless, from time to time, conspiracy theories about the terrorist attack surface on social networks.
The Commission of the Interstate Aviation Committee (IAC) decoded the parametric recorder and put forward a version about the cause of the AN-148 crash in the Moscow region on February 11.
Recall that on February 11, 2017, in the Ramensky District of the Moscow Region, a passenger plane AN-148 (Saratov Airlines) disappeared from the radar screens, taking off from Domodedovo and heading for Orsk. Later it became known that the plane crashed, all the people on board - 71 people (65 passengers and 6 crew members) were killed. The wreckage of the plane is scattered within a radius of one kilometer, and more than 1400 fragments of the bodies of the dead passengers were found at the crash site.
The official version, which, as of February 13, 2018, is being verified, states that the pilots could receive incorrect information about the flight speed, since the total pressure receivers (RPM) were iced up. Presumably this was due to the fact that the heating of these receivers was turned off during the flight.
It is assumed that the critical situation during the flight began 2.5 minutes after the takeoff of the AN-148 from the airport in Domodedovo. At this time, the plane was at an altitude of 1300 meters and had a speed of 470 km / h. 2.5 minutes after takeoff, discrepancies in the speed readings began, the crew received the task to compare the readings. After a while, problems began with the registration of the team. At this time, the discrepancies in the speed data continued to grow and reached 40-50 km / h. The crew turned off the autopilot to continue manual control of the aircraft. The modules showed different speed readings from 0 to 560 km / h, and during the crash on the third module the speed was recorded at 800 km / h.
According to the official version of the Tu-154 crash in Sochi on December 25, 2016, instead of a man, an orangutan turned out to be at the helm of the plane, who became ridiculous to pull the control knobs, which led to the tragedy. If we draw a parallel with driving, it would look like this: the driver got behind the wheel, started - and drove into a snowdrift. I handed it back - and crumpled three cars nearby. Then he drove forward - and crashed with all his dope into a garbage container, on which the trip ended.
Conclusion: either the driver was dead drunk - or something happened to the car.
But the Tu-154 recorders showed that the plane was fully operational. And to assume that the pilot began to take off in a dead form in front of the other crew members, not suicides, also does not work. And his voice on the recorder is absolutely sober.
However, the plane crashed - allegedly as a result of inexplicable actions of the crew. Or is there still an explanation - but the military leadership is desperately hiding it?
Cunning journalists have unearthed that the plane may have been heavily overloaded - hence all the consequences. Moreover, he was overloaded not at the Sochi airport Adler, where he made an intermediate landing, but at the Chkalovsky military airfield near Moscow, from where he started.
The weight of the excess cargo is more than 10 tons. However, at Chkalovsky, according to the documents, 10 tons less kerosene was poured into this Tu-1542B-2 - 24 tons, as a result, the total weight of the aircraft was 99.6 tons. This exceeded the norm by only 1.6 tons - and therefore it was not critical. The pilot probably noted that the takeoff there took place with an effort - but there could be many reasons for this: wind, atmospheric pressure, air temperature.
But in Adler, where the plane landed for refueling, this refueling played a fatal role. Fuel was added to the aircraft tanks already under the plug - up to 35.6 tons, which is why its take-off weight became more than 10 tons more than the permissible one.
And if we accept this version with overload, everything further gets the most logical explanation.
The separation of the aircraft from the Adler runway occurred at a speed of 320 km / h - instead of the nominal 270 km / h. Further ascent occurred at a speed of 10 meters per second - instead of the usual 12-15 m / s.
And 2 seconds after taking off from the ground, the commander of the ship, Roman Volkov, pulled the steering wheel towards himself in order to increase the takeoff angle. The fact is that the take-off and landing trajectories are strictly defined at each airfield: landing is more gentle, takeoff is steeper. This is necessary in order to separate in height the airliners taking off and going to land - without which they would constantly face a collision in the air.
But the increase in the ascent angle led to a drop in speed - the too heavy aircraft refused to perform this maneuver. Then the pilot, probably already realizing that they had put some kind of pig on him in the form of an extra load, moved the steering wheel away from him in order to stop the ascent and thereby gain speed.
This happened at an altitude of 200 meters - and if the plane had remained in this echelon, even if in violation of all the rules, the tragedy might not have happened. But Volkov piloted the car outside of its permissible modes - which no one had done before, since overload flights are strictly prohibited. And it is hard to imagine how the plane behaved in these conditions. In addition, it is possible that that extra load, being poorly secured, also violated the alignment of the aircraft during takeoff.
As a result, a slight panic arose in the cockpit. The pilots began to retract the flaps ahead of schedule - to reduce air resistance and thereby gain speed faster.
Then a dangerous approach to the water began, over which the take-off line was. The speed was already decent - 500 km / h, Volkov abruptly took the steering wheel over himself to raise the plane, simultaneously starting a turn - apparently, he decided to return to the airfield. Then the irreparable happened: the plane, in response to the pilot's actions, did not go up, but crashed into the water, scattering from a collision with it into fragments ...
Such a scenario, based on the data of the recorders, is absolutely consistent - and looks much more plausible than Shoigu's delusional explanation that the pilot lost his spatial orientation and instead of climbing began to perform a descent.
During takeoff, no spatial orientation at all is required from the pilot. Before him are two main devices: an altimeter and a speed indicator, he monitors their readings, not being distracted by the views outside the window ...
You can also ask: how did the overloaded plane manage to get off the runway? The answer is simple: there is a so-called ground effect, which significantly increases the lift of the wings up to 15 meters from the ground. By the way, the concept of ekranoplanes is based on it - semi-semi-aircraft, semi-ships flying within these 15 meters in height with a much larger load on board than those of equal power aircraft…
Well, and now the most important questions.
First: what kind of cargo was placed in the belly of this Tu - and by whom?
It is clear that these were not the lightweight medications of Dr. Lisa on this flight, and not an armored personnel carrier: a passenger plane does not have a wide port for the entry of any equipment. This cargo was obviously heavy and compact enough to enter through the cargo hatch.
And which one - you can assume anything here: boxes of vodka, shells, gold ingots, Sobyanin tiles ... And why it was decided to send it not by cargo, but by passenger flight - there could also be any reasons. From sloppiness for non-dispatch of combat cargo, which they decided to cover gradually - to the most criminal schemes for the export of precious metal or other contraband.
Another question: did the pilots know about this left cargo? For sure! This is not a needle in a haystack, but a whole haystack that cannot be hidden from view. But what exactly was there and what the true weight of it was - the pilots might not know. This is an army, where the order of the highest rank is above all instructions; and most likely that order was supplied with some other generous promise - with a hint of all sorts of intrigues in case of refusal. Under the influence of such an explosive mixture, a lot of malfeasance is being committed today - when a forced person is faced with a choice: either to earn decent money - or to be left without work and without pants.
And the well-known Russian perhaps, too, as they say, has not been canceled!
Who ordered? There can also be a large spread here: from any lieutenant colonel, deputy for armaments - to colonel-general. Depending on what kind of cargo was driven into the plane.
In short, in Chkalovsky the plane is overloaded, but this overload is compensated for with incomplete refueling - and in Adler, the tanks are already being filled to capacity. Obviously, the calculation was to fly with your own fuel to the Syrian Khmeimim (destination) and back. And the fact that the ship's commander agreed in Adler for these 35.6 tons of fuel speaks in favor of the fact that he still did not know the real amount of overload. He can fly alone - you can still admit the dashing daring to which Chkalov himself laid the foundation in our aviation. But behind Volkov was his own crew of 7 people, and 84 more passengers, including the artists of the Alexandrov ensemble!
The fact that the Ministry of Defense in this matter is not just obscurity, but with might and main hides the truth - such facts speak.
1. Shoigu's version of "violation of the spatial orientation (situational awareness) of the commander, which led to erroneous actions with the aircraft controls" does not stand up to criticism. For any pilot, not only with 4000 flight hours, like Volkov's, but with ten times less, takeoff is the simplest action that does not require any special skills. For example, landing in adverse weather conditions is a completely different matter. The crash during the landing of the same Tu-154 from the Polish delegation near Smolensk is a typical example of the pilot's lack of skill and experience. But no one has ever crashed during takeoff on a serviceable plane.
2. The decoding of the recorders probably already in the first days after the tragedy gave the whole alignment of what had happened. An analogy with the same Polish case in 2010 is appropriate here: then already on the 5th day of the IAC (Interstate Aviation Committee) issued an exhaustive version of the incident, which was fully confirmed later.
The IAC has been stubbornly silent about the Adler catastrophe for 6 months. On his website, where detailed analyzes of all flight accidents are published - only two hang on the subject of Adler short messagesthat the investigation is ongoing. And another significant passage:
“To investigate this disaster, the resources of scientific research and expert institutions have been attracted. Among them is the Interstate Aviation Committee, which has extensive experience in investigating accidents with Tu-154 aircraft and the necessary resources to provide assistance in order to expedite the investigation. At the same time, the IAC informs that the official comments on this investigation are provided exclusively by the Russian Ministry of Defense. "
That is, read, "they gagged us, sorry."
3. Naturally, the Minister of Defense in the first hours, if not minutes after the disaster, found out what kind of cargo was on board the crashed Tu. And the incredibly long search for the wreckage of the plane, which added absolutely nothing to the information of the recorders, suggests that they were looking for that very secret cargo. And not at all the truth, which was immediately clear to the military.
Well, and another question: why do the military, headed by their minister, hide this truth so much? And from whom - from Putin himself or from the people?
Well, to be hidden from Putin, I very much doubt: he does not look like a person who can be fooled around like that. That means they are hiding from the people. This means that this truth is such that it somehow terribly undermines the prestige of our military.
That is, either some lieutenant colonel, a complete idiot, loaded into a passenger plane something that should not have been close. And then a shadow on our entire army, in which such idiots are on horseback that they can ruin the backbone of Alexandrov's ensemble with their idiocy.
Or is the colonel-general involved, entering the very head - and then also shame and disgrace: it turns out that after Serdyukov was replaced by Shoigu, our army was not cleansed of the general outrage?
And the last thing. Remember, when we watched the film "Chapaev" in childhood, many of us shouted in the audience: "Chapay, run!" Just as spontaneously, today, when everything became almost clear with the Adler tragedy, I would like to shout to the pilot Volkov: “Don't take this load! And if he took it - don't fly higher than 200 meters above the sea! "
After all, if you look at the calm mind, which was not praised by the pilot, who got into a storm of circumstances, he had a chance of salvation. Namely: when overloading an aircraft, do not even try to comply with the instructions, which obliges to rise to such and such a height at such and such a distance from the airfield. Violate it to hell, get a reprimand for this, even if it is fired, but save your own life and the lives of others. That is, to fly at a minimum altitude, producing fuel - and when the weight of the aircraft decreases in an hour and a half, start climbing.
Another thing that again suggests itself is that if you decided to return to Adler, make a U-turn not by a standard bend with a side roll, which knocked the plane into the sea, but by the so-called "pancake". That is, one rudder - when the plane remains in horizontal plane, and the turning radius at the same time greatly increases: a maneuver that is practically not used in modern aviation.
Yes, only this chance, which could have saved this plane, in the future plan would still be ghostly and murderous. For example, Volkov could have managed to get out of the disastrous situation set by the organizers of his flight. Then the next time he or his colleague would be hung not 10, but 15 extra tons of some "unspecified" cargo: after all, appetites grow as their satisfaction. And the tragedy would have happened all the same - not in this case, so in the next, while maintaining its causes.
May God grant that as a result of this catastrophe, someone in our armed forces will give someone a good deal on their brains, putting an end to the outrageousness that led to an inevitable outcome.
Alexander Roslyakov
