Ruslan Crash

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 481.

On the 6^th of December in 1997AN 124 “Ruslan” performed flight Moscow-Irkutsk-Vladivostok-Vietnam. There were 2 attack planes on the board that hade to be transported to Vietnam (each of them cost about 30 million dollars).

Shortly after airborne (in 1minute 20 seconds) the captain reported ATC about two engines failure. He was intended to restart one of them, and then communication was lost. Ahead of Ruslan there were blocks of flats with thousands of people. The crew did their best to exclude impact with the residential area. Pilots tried to make it to a wide street. They managed to divert the plane from the blocks of flats but Ruslan banked on the left side.

The aircraft touched the house with one of the wings and slammed into 5 store house, causing also damage to the kindergarten next to it. Nearly 140 tones of fuel were spilt and in a matter of second ignited. The children were inside the building, not on the playground; it prevented numerous deaths. All children were evacuated from the building, though, two girls died from suffocation.

In accordance with official data 71 people perished.

Investigators concluded that the reason of the crash was mixture of 60 tones of summer fuel with winter one, as the aircraft was flying to warm Vietnam. There were three times less anti-icing components in the fuel than necessary.

As Ruslan was standing in frost for about two days with half empty fuel tanks, water contained in the fuel turned into ice. Part of it left in the fuel while another part accumulated as rime on the tank's sides. During refueling fuel mixed with ice more intensively. Following starting the engines ice crystals accumulated on fuel filters and blocked them. It caused all engines cut off.