Why the Boeing that disappeared over the Indian Ocean will never be found. Latest Plane Accidents: Terrible Plane Crashes in Recent Years What Happened on the Plane in

PANIC ON BOARD

“The plane almost crashed” - with this headline, the news about the incident with the North Wind airliner was published in several media outlets. Airbus A321 flew from Heraklion (Crete) to St. Petersburg on May 3, flight N41606. He was supposed to arrive in Pulkovo at 11:35.

One of the passengers, political scientist Dmitry Gavra, published a post on his social network in which he complained that the liner had sharply lost altitude and returned to the island. According to him, the plane “fell three kilometers.” The crew did not tell the passengers that the plane had turned around. People did not know that the plane was landing.

When the plane began to sharply lose altitude, the automation said in a metallic voice “prepare for splashdown.” We were flying over the sea then. That is, this is not a crew, but an automatic machine. It was audible because I was sitting quite close,” Dmitry Gavra told the Komsomolskaya Pravda - St. Petersburg correspondent.

As a source told KP, such a voice command is neither in Russian nor in English language No. Pilots don't use that kind of slang either.

Then the pilot managed to level the plane, and we returned and landed at a low altitude. We were stopped somewhere on the outskirts of the airport, there was an ambulance, police and technical services. And then I heard that the conversations were in a raised voice,” says the passenger.

At Heraklion airport, tourists waited for 2.5 hours. They were given water and sandwiches. The airline representative who came out to the people did not speak Russian. So one of the passengers had to help with the translation. According to Dmitry Gavra, no one said what technical problems there were with the plane. They reported that another plane would fly to St. Petersburg.

There were 111 people flying on board the A321, 8 of them were children. Tourists returned home from Crete by charter flight Ikar Airlines. The plane landed in Pulkovo at 18:15.

DID THE PLANE CRASH?

Northern Wind confirmed that there were technical problems with the plane. Which ones exactly are not specified. A few hours after the emergency, we got through to the assistant to the airline’s chief director.

We don't have any information. that there is something wrong with the plane. “Everything is fine with us,” Anton Maslakov commented to the KP in St. Petersburg correspondent.

We traced the plane's path on the Flyradar24 website, through which you can watch the iron birds online.

Judging by the graphs, the Airbus " North Wind"Left off the ground at 06:22 local time. Already at 06:36 it reached its maximum altitude - 7.7 kilometers. And then he began to descend: in the next minute he dropped one kilometer, then in seven minutes another three. The plane returned to the airport at an altitude of three kilometers. The total travel time is 40 minutes. Already at 07:02 the plane touched the ground. The airliner drew a figure eight in the sky.

COMPETENTLY

We talked about the incident with the plane with Honored Pilot of Russia, test pilot Vadim BAZYKIN.

- Vadim Valerievich, is this a sharp decline?

Yes, this is a pretty sharp decline. But we have such a concept among extreme sports enthusiasts, “threshold of death” - this is 8800 meters. If he didn’t score 8, then nothing fatal happened. Scary - it could be, but not fatal.

- What could possibly have happened?

It's impossible to guess. It could have been anything. A modern aircraft has about 130 computers. You will not take off until some kind of display, red or yellow, has gone out.

During takeoff, anything can happen - a minor failure or glitch. The pilot knows what to do when the “failure” command is displayed.

In general, there are not many situations when you need to return to the departure airfield. Even when one engine fails, the flight must be completed. If you decided to return, then it was according to instructions.

- Should flight attendants inform passengers about problems on the plane?

Everything works for flight safety. If the crew was struggling, they might not tell the flight attendants at all, so they wouldn't know. But if they knew, then, of course, they should have informed the passengers.

- Some passengers suggested that there could be depressurization of the cabin.

When depressurization occurs, sensors are triggered and oxygen masks fall out. It's just like airbags in a car. If this does not happen, then there was no depressurization.

- Why is a sharp decline dangerous to health?

Every airplane has a pressure switch. Passengers are accustomed to heights from the ground. When the plane is just taking off before takeoff, the pressure inside is as if it is already at an altitude of one and a half kilometers. When the plane flies at 10 kilometers, passengers in the cabin feel as if they are flying at an altitude of three. If the plane suddenly loses altitude, it automatically maintains pressure. It might cause your ears to get clogged, but it’s unlikely to be something painful or serious.

- One of the passengers claims that he heard a command from the on-board computer. Is this possible?

Passengers can only hear what the flight attendants say. All voice commands are given to the crew inside the cabin, so nothing can be heard. This is already a wild fantasy playing out.

October 31, 2015, flight Sharm el-Sheikh - St. Petersburg. Someone looks through photos on their phone, imagining how they will tell their family and friends about their vacation. Married couples calm down children who are acting too violently in the morning - and are probably afraid to fly. Departure was on schedule, we headed straight into the sky. The very next day, the media circulated a photo of the “main passenger” - ten-month-old Darina Gromova. This photo will become a kind of symbol of the fateful flight Airbus 321, from which none of the 224 people returned alive.

"Flight in normal mode"

The plane took off safely and began to climb at 6:50 Moscow time. Everything is going as normal, when suddenly after 23 minutes the dispatchers lose contact with the crew.

Meanwhile, St. Petersburg Pulkovo Airport reports that the flight is delayed “for technical reasons.” Time is postponed once, rescheduled twice... In Russia, they try not to think about the worst and nervously wait for messages from relatives: about an emergency landing, or about anything, as long as they write. When the flowers had already begun to fade, and the message about the next flight postponement was on the board, the relatives’ nerves could not stand it: calls began pouring in to the Kogalymavia airline and the tour operator Brisco. “We’re figuring everything out,” “Don’t worry,” people in different authorities heard.

And then came the news that flashed through everyone’s head, but they refused to believe. It was not immediately known that everyone had died. One of the rescuers who immediately moved to the scene after the crash reported that he heard the voices of passengers coming from under the wreckage of the liner. Within minutes it became clear: I hadn’t heard, it seemed.

Main passenger

A photograph of ten-month-old Darina Gromova from Gatchina, taken at Pulkovo airport, seemed to have gone around all the well-known Russian media and was circulated on social networks. The photograph became one of the symbols of that terrible tragedy.

Son, Alexey, wanted to be a pilot. Only I didn’t allow it,” Darina’s grandmother Elena later told Life.

Alexey's father was a military pilot for 30 years. The young man himself graduated from a technical specialty and went to work for an IT company. Here he met Tatyana. The young people got married a little more than a year before the tragedy. The young man’s social network page, which is still accessible, contains many photos of the couple in love, taken on their wedding day.

Tatyana called her daughter “the main passenger.” Before the flight from Pulkovo, she photographed a girl who was pressing her hands against the glass and posted the picture on social networks.

Darina’s grandmother suggested that parents not take their child on the flight: he would be scared and would not tolerate it well. But they didn’t listen: the child needed to bask in the sun.

"I won't live without her"

October 31st was a tragedy for thousands of people. Svetlana Dudochkina’s husband, Anatoly, was unable to fly with his wife on vacation that time. The couple had been to Egypt more than once, so the woman knew quite well how to behave at the resort. His warning seemed even more strange.

It was the first time she went on vacation without me. I told her that if something happens, I won’t survive without her. “I don’t want to live anymore, I’m not interested,” Anatoly said after the crash.

The woman went on vacation in the company of her daughter and two young grandchildren. But the daughter decided to stay another day or two, since there was an opportunity to rest longer. As a result, only Svetlana of the whole family boarded the fateful flight.

Birthday gift

On October 27, the common-law wife of the then deputy head of Pskov, Alexandra Kopylova, celebrated her birthday. He bought trips for himself and his beloved, Elena Melnikova. They didn’t want to let me go from work, but the deputy head of the city persuaded me to do it. He argued that the reason was too weighty.

The man met his future common-law wife at work. The fact is that Elena is the head of the personnel department in the Pskov City Duma. Alexander’s wife died several years earlier, Elena was divorced. They had been together for about a year at that point.

All the time on vacation, Elena talked on social networks about how they had a very good rest - swimming, sunbathing and generally having a blast. I went online for the last time three hours before the fateful flight.

“A little more and I’ll leave aviation”

Senior flight attendant, 38-year-old Valentina Martsevich, who devoted 12 years to the sky, planned to retire from aviation in the near future. I wanted peace of mind and made plans for a calm family life. Valentina's husband, Maxim, is the commander of the aircraft. At that moment he was on a China Airlines flight.

Valentina herself is from Anapa, she was working at the Krasnodar airport when she met her future husband. Soon they moved to Moscow together. He is always on the flight, she is on the next flight. Tired of seeing my husband and family in fits and starts.

On October 5, her birthday, she flew home to hug her mother. Friends later recalled that she behaved quite strangely: she spoke strangely, smiled strangely, and took a lot of pictures.

While returning to Moscow, shortly before the fateful flight, the woman got scared for the first time in her life while boarding. She told her friends how the plane was shaking and she was afraid that the pilots would not land the plane successfully.

"Fluffy, I'm waiting"

Flight attendant Marina Okhotnikova was supposed to meet her steward husband Andrei Belomestnov at Domodedovo on November 1. The plan looked like this: Andrey lands in Pulkovo, rests, and then goes to Moscow as a passenger. 20 minutes after its arrival in the capital, it lands. The young people were planning an unforgettable weekend.

The couple had a tradition: all four years that they were together, Andrei sent his beloved SMS during such “intersections” with the same text: “Fluffy, I’m already waiting for you.” This time there was no message. Andrei was supposed to turn 30 in November...

Versions

Experts considered four main versions of the plane crash: a technical malfunction, a pilot error, that the plane was shot down, and an explosion.

Technical problem

The first version that investigators began to consider was a technical malfunction. Allegedly the liner had defects. For example, 14 years before the tragedy, in November 2001, at Cairo airport, the airliner landed unsuccessfully and hit the ground with its tail. At that time it was still owned by Middle East Airlines. After the incident, the aircraft was repaired and sold. After that he was chartered various airlines until, finally, it “settled” in Kogalymavia in 2012.

You can say whatever you want about this airline, but any aircraft of any carrier undergoes inspection before a new flight. In addition, the boards undergo technical checks. So, the engines of the airliner were examined five days before the tragedy. And it is unlikely that the experts would have missed such a significant malfunction that could have caused the plane to crash. This point of view was confirmed by the airline. In addition, experienced pilots have repeatedly said that none of the crew members would risk their own lives, but would simply refuse to fly if in doubt.

Another fact speaks against the version of a malfunction: on the eve of the crash, the Airbus was flying from Sharm el-Sheikh to Samara and back. After that, it underwent maintenance at the Egyptian airport; no critical problems were recorded.

A week after the tragedy, IAC representatives said that until the recording of the recorders stopped, the flight proceeded as normal; information about failures of the aircraft’s systems and components was not recorded on the parametric recorder.

Crew error

This version became the second. Allegedly, the pilots could panic and behave incorrectly in a critical situation. This version was denied by the Federal Air Transport Agency on the same day. PIC Valery Nemov was originally a military pilot, and after his retirement (the man was 48 years old) he retrained as a pilot civil aviation V training center AmurAir in Turkey. His total flight experience is 3,682 hours, of which 1,100 hours were as an aircraft commander.

The co-pilot, 45-year-old Sergei Trukhachev, had 5,641 flight hours under his belt - more than the PIC. He underwent special training in the Czech Republic to fly the A321.

The Kogalymavia pilots themselves ruled out the possibility of an error: they posted a letter on the Internet just a few hours after the tragedy, where they claimed that there could be no error.

Shot down

Shortly after the crash, ISIS militants claimed responsibility for the plane crash. They even published a video where the aircraft was allegedly shot down. It soon turned out that the video was nothing more than a fake, and no one shot down the Russian airliner.

After a preliminary inspection of the wreckage of the plane, it became clear to experts that no one had fired at it.

The plane broke up in the air. Initially, the tail section was torn off, and then the entire airliner began to disintegrate. The wreckage of the aircraft was located at a distance of about 40 km from each other, the tail and nose were at a distance of 5 km.

Terrorist attack

This version is a priority. The media began to write that there was a bomb on board a few hours after the tragedy. Within a month, the fact of the explosion was confirmed by Russian experts. Thus, on November 16, 2015, the head of the FSB, Alexander Bortnikov, at a meeting in the Kremlin for the first time officially stated that what happened was a terrorist attack.

It was initially assumed that the bomb was planted between the passenger seats in the 30th row. However, later experts came to the conclusion that an improvised explosive device with a capacity of up to 1 kg in TNT equivalent was located in the tail section, next to the baby strollers. A timer installed in the bomb counted down how many more minutes the 224 people would live. After the explosion, the tail section of the airliner was torn off, and it went into an uncontrolled dive.

For a long time, Egyptian officials did not officially recognize the incident as a terrorist attack (according to one version, for fear of multimillion-dollar lawsuits from relatives of the victims). Cairo called for waiting for the official results of the investigation, which, by the way, are still missing. However, in February 2017, the representative of the Egyptian Foreign Ministry, Ahmed Abu Zeid, somewhat admitted that a terrorist attack had occurred on board.

Dozens or even hundreds of people became victims of terrorist operations, including as a result of the crash of a Russian airliner in the Sinai, he said.

* The organization is banned in Russia by decision of the Supreme Court.

The Air Niugini plane crash occurred at the end of September.

An Australian diver helped rescue passengers after a plane crash in Micronesia before rescue divers arrived to search for the sinking plane. Air Niugini Flight 73 failed to gain sufficient altitude at international airport Chuuk on Veno Island. The plane rose to 145 meters and crashed into the lagoon on September 28.

Former diver Adam Milburn, who lives in Micronesia (near Australia), was also on board the crashing plane during an emergency water landing. The man immediately intkbbach rushed to the aid of the victims immediately after landing in the lagoon. Horrifying footage has shocked people around the world, showing US Navy rescuers entering the Boeing 737 after Mr Milburn had already helped evacuate almost all the passengers.

A fisherman from Micronesian Ostrava, Venyo, immediately rushed to help when the plane finally landed in the water off the coast. One by one, Milburn bravely pulled the passengers from the sinking ship, while the Air Niugini crew panicked and were unable to help their passengers. The brave man also returned to the plane with US Navy sailors to check on the survivors and help with the search for the missing.

Rescuers swam the length of the plane, searching for possible victims, until the water in the cabin reached dangerous flooding levels.

“Like everyone else, I was confused: how did we get here? What is happening? What are we doing and should be doing right now in a plane floating on water?” Milburn told ABC.

The man also claimed that after the crash the crew urged passengers to remain in their seats in a sitting position; no further instructions were received by anyone on the sinking board. As soon as the man realized that he should rely only on himself, he grabbed his life jacket and began to help people. Milburn also wondered whether he had a chance to help the Indonesian man who died in the incident (the only passenger on board to die).

I literally touched everyone who came out of the emergency door on the left wing, either helped them into the life raft, or physically carried them, the most important thing for me was that no one fell off the wing and drowned, I was absolutely sure that what I'm doing."

US Navy rescuers helped evacuate the passengers to shore, many with head and neck injuries after being struck by the fall. Milburn told the media that crew members were not helpful or even checked the names of passengers.

American journalist Bill James was also on board the sunken plane, and it was he who later called Milburn’s actions heroic.

“I know Adam, and I would guess that he would be the last person to call himself anything like a hero, but given that the plane was in the water, and people in a critical situation, I would call his actions heroic,” the reporter noted. .

Air Niugini, national airline Papua New Guinea initially announced that all 35 passengers and 12 crew members had been evacuated safely. However, it later turned out that one passenger had died. Eko Kahyanto Singgi's body was recovered from the sunken plane by US Navy divers, the Micronesian government said.

The Daily Mail has contacted Air Niugini for comment.

Officials investigating the cause of the crash said the plane landed in the ocean after overshooting a Micronesian runway. The government stated that 9 people were injured in the crash, 4 of whom were this moment are in critical condition.

It is worth noting that on the island near the crash site, people also rushed to help, jumping into fishing boats and heading towards the sinking plane. Later with the help of US Navy rescuers local residents used their boats to transport people from the plane to the shore.

The exact cause of the accident is under investigation. Air Niugini says reduced visibility due to heavy rain caused the pilot to miss the runway.

Chuuk State (also known as Truk) is one of the 4 states Federated States Micronesia, with 50,000 inhabitants over 46 square miles. The plane began to descend near Weno Island in Chuuk Bay, where most of population.