home Lures Flydubai plane crash crew. FlyDubai plane crashes near Rostov-on-Don

Flydubai plane crash crew. FlyDubai plane crashes near Rostov-on-Don

ATTENTION!

A hotline has been opened for the Main Directorate of the Ministry of Emergency Situations of the Russian Federation for the Rostov Region 8-863-23-99999. For foreign citizens - 8-499-216-50-50.

A passenger Boeing crashed in Rostov-on-Don. This happened at 03:50 in the morning. During landing, the plane touched the ground and broke into pieces. It barely made it to the runway; experts say it crashed when approaching it, 300 meters away. There were 62 people on board, including four children, all of whom died. The passengers included both Russians and foreign citizens - at least eight people from Ukraine, Azerbaijan and India.

There is a ringing silence at the airport, no one is allowed into the building except relatives and loved ones of the victims, they were gathered in the international departure hall - 600 people in total. Here are several dozen people whose flights were cancelled. Over the loudspeaker they are asked to go home and wait for a decision on their flights, but people cannot move, crushed by their common grief. They don't even talk to each other, they just sit, staring at the walls and silently crying.

“My daughter and son-in-law were on this flight,” Nina Fedorovna Titova says through tears. “At seven in the morning my grandson called and reported. The ground just disappeared from under my feet. How could this happen to my children?! They were such a good family! She was a civil servant, he worked in a bus depot. Friendly strong family. They say happiness doesn't last long. Here they were happy. Not for long... They are on the lists, Dmitry and Elena Chernovs, both 46 years old. Lord, what a tragedy, we were flying from vacation. They left behind a 23-year-old son, my grandson.

Most of the dead were tourists who were flying back from vacation - rested and happy. For Rostov and the region there are a lot of familiar big names. Igor Pakus is a deputy of the Legislative Assembly and the chief physician of the regional hospital clinic - a surgeon from God. He flew to the UAE with his wife (). Also on the list are the wife and daughter of the head of the administration of the Azov district of the Rostov region, Valery Bevzyuk - Marina and Victoria. Valery Nikolaevich gave them the ticket - just in time for his wife’s 50th birthday; he couldn’t fly himself because of work commitments, so his 27-year-old youngest daughter flew to rest with her mother (details)

The day before, on March 18, the Russian Ministry of Emergency Situations for the Rostov region announced a storm warning for the region - hurricane, snow and ice.

After the disaster, the Rostov-on-Don airport was closed for departure and reception of flights for a day. Planes are sent to neighboring Krasnodar and Mineralnye Vody. Tomorrow, March 20, mourning will be declared in the Rostov region, the head of the region Vasily Golubev announced. “The cause was weather conditions: heavy rain, wind, poor visibility, what was happening outside the window was terrible, at the time of the disaster the visibility was 70 meters, the wind was 12-14 meters per second,” says Yuri Batagov, vice-president of the Federal trade union of aviation dispatchers of Russia. - Whether the instruments could have failed - I doubt it. But investigation will tell. FULL LIST OF PASSENGERS

Boeing 738 crash trajectory. According to the flight path, the plane landed twice and then circled the airport 12 times, burning off fuel. The preliminary cause of the plane crash was bad weather conditions or crew error.

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On the night of March 19, a FlyDubai Boeing 737 flying from Dubai crashed at Rostov-on-Don airport. The crash killed all 62 people on board. According to preliminary data, the cause of the incident could have been severe weather conditions.

An updated list of the dead was published on the website of the Russian Ministry of Emergency Situations.

The Boeing 737-800, flight FZ981, took off from Dubai Airport on the evening of March 18. According to the schedule, he was supposed to arrive in Rostov-on-Don at approximately 1:40 Moscow time. The flight proceeded normally and took about four hours, which is considered normal time for such a flight.

However, according to the website flightradar24, which tracks aircraft movements in real time, the pilots failed to land on the first attempt, after which they formally went around. In fact, according to the website, the liner had to circle over the city for about two more hours, making as many as ten circles during this time.

"Completely collapsed"

It is still not known for certain what exactly happened to the plane during landing. Russia's Investigative Committee said the plane completely collapsed immediately after touching the ground. However, the department does not specify whether this happened on or near the runway, or how exactly the plane hit the ground.

Initially, news agency sources reported that during landing the plane hit the ground with its wing or tail. Subsequently, unofficial information began to appear, according to which the plane could go into a dive at an altitude of about 100-200 meters and crash into the ground almost at a right angle.

Illustration copyright Reuters Image caption The wreckage of the plane was scattered over more than a kilometer

According to experts, this could happen if the pilot, when trying to go around, raised the nose of the airliner too sharply, which on such aircraft leads to a loss of speed and a stall in the dive. At the same time, there is no official confirmation of this version.

A video taken from surveillance cameras near the airport appeared online, showing that the plane was descending at a very high speed and exploded immediately after hitting the ground. At the same time, due to the poor quality, it is difficult to understand how controlled this decline was and which part of the fuselage hit the ground.

Information about the crash site is also conflicting. At first it was reported that the plane crashed into the ground a few hundred meters from the runway, but then it was reported that it hit the runway itself. Most of the photographs of the plane's wreckage were also taken on the runway.

According to investigative authorities and rescuers, by now it has been possible to find both flight recorders of the aircraft - voice and parametric. Specialists are studying their condition. It is expected that their decoding will help to understand what happened to the plane.

day of mourning

According to the latest data, there were 55 passengers and seven crew members on board the plane. Of the passengers, 44 were Russians, and eight were Ukrainians. Also among them were two citizens of India and one citizen of Uzbekistan. The crew of the liner was international. They were commanded by a Cypriot. It was also confirmed that the crew included one Russian.

Illustration copyright EPA Image caption According to Rostourism, most of the passengers were tourists.

Among the dead were deputy of the regional legislative assembly Igor Pakus and his wife. It was also reported that the wife and daughter of the head of the Azov district of the Rostov region, Valery Berzyuk, died in the plane crash. Journalists found their names in the list of victims published by the Russian Ministry of Emergency Situations.

According to Rostourism, most of the passengers were tourists. In particular, the department has already found out that there were at least 29 people on board who had purchased tour packages from one of the largest Russian tour operators, Natalie Tours. Now Rostourism is clarifying whether among the passengers there were clients of other travel companies.

About 600 relatives and friends of the victims arrived at the Rostov airport. EMERCOM psychologists work with them. The regional authorities have already ordered compensation in the amount of one million rubles to be paid to the families of the victims of the plane crash. In addition, the regional governor Vasily Golubev declared March 20 a day of mourning.

Rostov airport will be closed for at least a day. Now all flights following it are redirected to other cities, including Krasnodar and Moscow.

Not a terrorist attack

Russian investigative authorities opened a criminal case into the incident under an article on violation of safety rules and operation of air transport, which resulted in the death of people. It provides for up to seven years in prison.

To investigate the case, a special investigation team has been formed, reinforced by investigators from the central office of the Investigative Committee of Russia and specialists with experience in investigating aircraft accidents.

Illustration copyright RIA Novosti Image caption Rostov-on-Don airport was closed for at least a day due to the disaster

The official representative of the Investigative Committee, Vladimir Markin, did not specify whether there are suspects in the case. The department also noted that they are considering a variety of versions

what happened.

The investigation report clarifies that the cause of the disaster could have been pilot error, difficult weather conditions, technical malfunction and other factors. At the same time, the version of the terrorist attack is not being considered.

In turn, experts asked why the plane circled over the city for two hours and tried to land in difficult conditions when it could have immediately gone to an alternate airfield.

In particular, the Aeroflot plane, which also failed to land in Rostov the first time.

First disaster

FlyDubai airline was established in 2008. Its fleet consists of 49 Boeing 737-800 aircraft, with an average age of just three and a half years.

The crashed Boeing 737-800 was produced in 2010 and made its first flight at the same time. FlyDubai was its first and only owner and operator.

The company operates flights FZ981 and FZ982 to Rostov-on-Don and back about twice a week. At the same time, the crashed plane with registration number A6-FDN, according to the flightradar24 portal, was performing this flight for the first time in recent years. On Friday he flew from Dubai to Kyiv and back, and before that he worked mainly on domestic flights to the UAE.

The plane crash was the first for FlyDubai in its history. The company expressed condolences to the relatives of the victims and promised to send its own specialists to Russia to help in the investigation.

Boeing also announced its readiness to cooperate in establishing the circumstances of the incident.

Details of the crash of the Boeing of the Fly Dubai company have become known. Report

The media obtained a transcript of the last conversations between the airliner crew. If you believe the recording, it turns out that when approaching the next circle, the commander turned off the autopilot.

Whether intentionally or not is unknown, it was in manual control mode that the airliner began to rapidly lose altitude. Journalists unearthed other shocking details of the plane crash. Our correspondent Maria Evsyukova, about a possible new turn in the investigation.

Crash details

After 6 seconds, the plane literally hit the ground with its nose.

Boeing captain Aristos Socrates tried to return the liner to a horizontal position by turning off the automation. But during the dive, the stabilizer activated, blocking the steering wheel.

According to the preliminary version, the pilot accidentally hit it when switching to manual mode.

According to FlyDubai airline employees, the pilot of the airliner that crashed in Rostov-on-Don last Saturday complained of fatigue before takeoff.

The man was working his last days before his dismissal.

For the pilot, this was already the 10th flight in 11 days. Colleagues of the victims are confident that overwork is not the main cause of the disaster, but one of the contributing factors.

Pilots repeatedly complained to management about fatigue. Working so hard, many of them did not get enough sleep and switched off even during flights. This scandalous statement by one of the FlyDubai airline pilots shocked the public.

Nikolay Kosenkov, Doctor of Medical Sciences, psychologist of the highest category:

“The fact that he did not rest leads, of course, to a lack of coordination of movements, but most importantly, attention was impaired, attention to the events taking place. He turned off the autopilot prematurely while climbing at 40 seconds, instead of climbing for a minute or something, he most likely did not perceive the time. His perception of time has changed.".

However, Flydubai is not the only airline that forces its employees to work hard and puts passengers at risk.

Emirates pilots are also unhappy with their schedule. According to company documents, the rest period between work shifts is 24 hours.

In reality - much less.

If a pilot complains of fatigue, the anonymous author said, he must write down how many hours he has flown, how and at what time he sleeps. True, he can submit such an application no more than two times.

Then comes the dismissal.

At Emirates, seven pilots share a workload that on European airlines is distributed among 10 or 11 people.

Consequently, these seven pilots are forced to work much more, and they have much less time to sleep and recuperate.

Of course, if you are constantly tired, this leads to illness, and no one wants a sick pilot to fly the plane. But that's what happens at Emirates.

If a pilot gets sick and takes time off from work, he will be punished: he will lose money, will be forced to report, and will receive a warning. However, Emirates does not confirm the information about colossal processing.

This is understandable.

Overwork has repeatedly become one of the causes of plane crashes.

So in July 2014, a TransAsia plane crashed in Taiwan. The accident killed 48 people.

Due to the same fatigue, in 2011 over the North Atlantic, a Canadian airline pilot sent the plane into a dive.

Then 16 people were injured.

In addition, constantly changing belts disrupts the functioning of the biological clock. All this leads to heart disease and rapid aging.

In the meantime, the investigation into the FlyDubai plane crash has more questions than answers.

One thing is perhaps certain.

Chronic fatigue and a pilot, who is responsible for the lives of hundreds of passengers every day, are incompatible concepts.

On the night of March 19, a Flydubai airline Boeing 737-800 A6-FDN crashed on the runway of Rostov airport. As a result of the crash, all 62 people on board the liner died - 55 passengers (including four children) and seven crew members. Most of those killed in the plane crash were residents of the Rostov region; in addition, among the passengers there were citizens of Ukraine and Uzbekistan.

On March 20, mourning was declared in the Rostov region for the victims of the crash. The tragedy shocked the whole country - spontaneous mourning events took place in many cities. For example, in Moscow, people carried flowers and notes to the representative office of the Rostov region; in St. Petersburg, those sympathizing with the grief of Rostov residents lit candles on the spit of Vasilyevsky Island.

Reuters

“This tragedy affected, without exaggeration, everyone, because almost everyone on board had an acquaintance,” Rostov resident and journalist Stanislav Smagin told RT. — Rostov-on-Don is still a provincial city, here everyone knows each other through one person. This tragedy will remain in the memory of Rostov residents forever, because this is one of the blackest pages in the history of Rostov-on-Don.”

“The atmosphere in the city was mournful and heavy, but uniting. A common grief that united all the townspeople. I note that there were no rumors in the city about this plane crash from Rostov residents, although this is very typical for Rostov and southern cities in general,” recalls Smagin.

Russian President Vladimir Putin and Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev expressed condolences to the families of the victims. In addition, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, Pope Francis, UAE Prime Minister Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and other world leaders addressed words of sympathy to the relatives of the victims of the disaster.

Flydubai airline launched a special website where everyone could leave words of condolences in connection with the tragedy.

The government of the Rostov region paid the relatives of each victim 1 million rubles. In addition, Flydubai airline transferred 2 million 25 thousand rubles to the families of the victims. The mandatory amount of compensation from the carrier, provided for by the Air Code of the Russian Federation in such cases, is 2 million rubles for one deceased.

Let us note that some relatives do not consider this amount of payment fair and intend to demand that Flydubai management pay actual damages through the court. That is, we are not talking about the standard insurance payment offered by the airline, but about compensation for moral and material damage.

The airline's management provided for this option by introducing a clause into the compensation agreement, according to which the amount paid is deducted from all subsequent payments established in court or by settlement agreement.

As a result, according to the All-Russian Union of Insurers, five families refused to sign an agreement with Flydubai, demanding that this clause be removed from the text of the document, since they expect to receive compensation from the airline through the court in excess of 2 million 25 thousand rubles.

Fatal "shift"

The investigation into the causes of the crash is being carried out by the Interstate Aviation Committee, as well as specialists from the United Arab Emirates, France and the USA.

A detailed chronology of those events, reconstructed by IAC experts based on data from flight recorders and testimony from dispatchers, is set out in the committee’s interim report, published in April 2016.

The aircraft, flying FDB 981 from Dubai, was supposed to land in Rostov-on-Don at 01:40 Moscow time. The flight to Rostov passed without incident and took about four hours. There were no signs of trouble: the predicted and actual weather in the area of the Rostov airport, as well as two alternate airports in Krasnodar and Volgograd, allowed the plane to land.

Before the descent, the crew requested data on the weather and the readiness of the runway from the dispatcher. It was raining near the airport, accompanied by wind gusts of up to 18 meters per second, visibility was about three kilometers. But it was not possible to land the plane - the captain of the aircraft transmitted information about the presence of “wind shear” to the dispatch service and left at 01:42 for the second circle, climbing to an altitude of 1500 m. “Wind shear” in aviation is a local change in wind speed and direction . This phenomenon can lead to uncontrollability of the aircraft during takeoff or landing.

An hour and a half later, at 03:23, the Boeing team made another attempt, requesting permission to descend for a second approach. In both cases, the pilots turned off the aircraft's autopilot system after descending to 600 meters. But this attempt was not crowned with success - at an altitude of 220 m, the captain decided to go around again with the engines set to maximum take-off mode. Experts believe that this decision was made by the ship's commander due to gusts of wind near the ground.

Experts from the International Aviation Committee came to the conclusion that the cause of the tragedy was a crew error. At an altitude of 900 meters, the pilot simultaneously turned the steering wheel away (in this position the ship begins to descend) and switched the plane's stabilizer to a dive. As a result, at an altitude of 1000 meters, the plane began to descend again, this time in an uncontrolled mode. “The subsequent actions of the crew did not prevent a collision with the ground,” the IAC report says. At 03:41, the Boeing 737 collided with the runway at a speed of 600 km/h.

Human factor

Soon, videos of the plane crash began to appear on the Internet. The footage shows a luminous object rapidly rushing towards the ground, then a bright flash occurs.

Internet users found a lot of “oddities” in the video. For example, many wondered why the trees in the video footage were motionless even though the weather was windy in the area of the crash. Subsequently, experts explained that the trees could have been blocked from the wind by houses, and in addition, wind speeds at different heights could vary greatly.

Also causing bewilderment was the fact that the falling ship glowed - there were suggestions that the plane caught fire while still in flight. But experts refuted this version: it was the light of landing lights, not a flame, experts explained.

The initially put forward version that the aircraft was malfunctioning was rejected after a thorough check. According to IAC, all systems and units of the Boeing 737-800 were working properly.

Reuters
The year of the plane crash in Rostov-on-Don

“The aircraft had a valid certificate of airworthiness, had undergone the necessary maintenance and was operational at the time of departure,” the committee said in a statement.

Bad weather conditions also could not have caused the tragedy, experts say. In general, the weather parameters met the standards under which an aircraft of this class can land.

Thus, today the only version of the causes of the crash is the error of the pilots, who had the necessary qualifications and experience, but for some reason lost control during landing.

The captain of the aircraft, 38-year-old Aristos Socrates, was a citizen of Cyprus, the co-pilot, 37-year-old Alejandro Alava Cruz, was of Spain. Socrates had almost 6,000 flight hours under his belt, most of which he spent at the controls of a Boeing 737. He received clearance to command the aircraft a year and a half before the Rostov disaster. In addition to the Boeing 737, the co-pilot flew ATR 42/72 and Airbus A320 aircraft.

Experts note that the scenario of the Rostov disaster is reminiscent of the crash of a Boeing-737 of Tatarstan Airlines at Kazan airport in November 2013. Then the crew was also unable to land the ship the first time and went into a second circle, from which the plane went into an uncontrolled dive and crashed on the ground.

During the investigation of that disaster, an experiment was conducted: experienced pilots were asked to fly the plane around on a simulator. Only four out of eleven subjects completed the task, and none of the pilots was able to correctly answer all the questions about the operation of the aircraft’s automatic systems.

As Valery Postnikov, executive director of the Society of Independent Aircraft Accident Investigators, explained in an interview with RT, the pilots’ error is the final version.

“For unknown reasons, the pilots made a mistake while controlling the aircraft, and the weather certainly had nothing to do with it. There is such a thing as a meteominium - a certain set of conditions under which this aircraft is tested and should land normally. Modern means of navigation and aircraft control allow pilots, subject to normal procedures, to land absolutely safely,” the expert noted.

According to Postnikov, the crew had to be ready for a go-around, as this is a mandatory exercise in pilot training. The reason for the problem that has arisen may be that when training pilots, real flights with an instructor are not used - it is too expensive.

“All the problems of pilot training now only come down to money. Today, all training processes on modern ships take place on simulators, but still, test flights with an instructor pilot are needed,” Postnikov noted.

Aviation expert Sergei Krutousov agrees with this point of view. In a conversation with RT, he noted that the domestic school for training civil aviation pilots has traditionally been superior to foreign ones, but now the level is declining in Russia.

“Our training system is also starting to “float”, because we use foreign aircraft. And at the same time, we have to train pilots using Western methods with all the ensuing consequences. Today, pilots are trained to become a computer operator, but before there were many flights in manual mode,” the expert noted.

But perhaps the cause of the tragedy was not insufficient training of the pilots, but their physical fatigue. Immediately after the tragedy, RT began receiving appeals from Flydubai employees and pilots of other airlines, who said that this and other airlines were violating instructions by forcing pilots to work overtime.

Both Boeing 737-800 pilots were also overworked, unable to recuperate between flights. It was fatigue that could lead to a decrease in concentration, which resulted in a tragic mistake.

Aviation experts continue to investigate the causes of the Fly Dubai plane crash in Rostov-on-Don. According to preliminary data, a combination of factors led to the tragedy.

But final conclusions will be made after a complete decoding of the flight recorders. Surveillance camera footage released yesterday shows that the airliner is sharply descending, and, in fact, falling, crashing into the runway of the Rostov-on-Don airport.

In fact, before landing, the airliner goes to an altitude of one kilometer and begins to descend sharply. At an altitude of 300 meters, it suddenly begins to fall at an angle of 50 degrees at a speed of 300 km/h.

Experts note that, most likely, the pilots tried to “pull” the board, but did not have enough time or strength. There was an assumption that due to a sharp temperature change, the elevator mechanism could simply freeze, but not everyone agrees with it.

Experts agree that the Boeing commander, unable to land the plane a second time, switched the control from the autopilot to manual mode. Pilots acted similarly in November 2013 in Kazan. Exiting the autopilot while climbing, losing space and suddenly turning the helm away from you. When the plane went into a dive, they could no longer get it out.

“For some reason, the autopilot turns off, and the plane abruptly goes into a dive. In this case, if there was an icy stabilizer or elevator, these mechanisms might not be enough to bring the plane out of a steep dive,” Vesti.ru quotes flight safety expert Alexander as saying Romanov. “The plane was simply uncontrollable, it fell almost vertically, there was a complete breakdown of the flow from the horizontal tail, the stabilizer was put into a dive, and the crew’s attempts to recover the plane did not produce any results.”

“It’s very difficult for people to jump from one to another,” states Honored Test Pilot of the USSR Viktor Zabolotsky. “The transition to manual control and further removal of mechanization - climb, turn... If the plane is picked up at high angles of attack, these are, naturally, high angles attack is a loss of speed, a jump in altitude and without speed, the plane begins to fall."

Let us remind you that early last Saturday morning a Boeing 737 of Flydubai airlines crashed during landing in Rostov-on-Don. There were 62 people on board, all of them died. So far, two versions of the causes of the tragedy are being considered: a malfunction of the aircraft and pilot error.

FlyDubai was founded only seven years ago by the UAE government and is based at Dubai International Airport. There have never been any aviation accidents in the history of this low-cost airline. The company was founded in 2009 and started with a few aircraft, but in 7 years it grew its fleet to 50 Boeing 737-800 aircraft. In November 2013, FlyDubai ordered an additional 111 Boeing aircraft.

In Russia, the aircraft of this company operate flights to Moscow, Mineralnye Vody, Samara, Ufa, Kazan, Yekaterinburg, Krasnodar, Rostov-on-Don, Tyumen. The President of FlyDubai is Ahmed bin Saeed Al Maktoum. He is the uncle of the current ruler of the Emirate of Dubai, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum. Ahmed bin Said himself is the son of the ex-ruler of the Emirate of Dubai, Sheikh Said bin Maktoum Al Maktoum.

As Pravda reported. Ru, the plane arriving from Dubai could not land on the first try. He circled over the airport for a long time. The Boeing crashed while trying to land for the second time - it went into a dive and crashed into the runway at high speed.

All information about the tragedy in the story: