![]() Aeroflot Tupolev Tu-154B, similar to that involved in the accident | |
Hijacking | |
---|---|
Date | 8 March 1988 |
Summary | Hijacking |
Aircraft | |
Aircraft type | Tupolev Tu-154B |
Operator | Aeroflot |
Registration | CCCP-85413 |
Flight origin | Irkutsk Airport, Irkutsk, Irkutsk Oblast, Russian SFSR, USSR |
Stopover | Kurgan Airport, Kurgan, Kurgan Oblast, Russian SFSR, USSR |
Destination | Pulkovo Airport, Leningrad, Russian SFSR, USSR |
Occupants | 84 |
Passengers | 76 |
Crew | 8 |
Fatalities | 9 (including 5 of the hijackers) |
Injuries | 20 to 36 |
Survivors | 75 |
Aeroflot Flight 3739 [1] was a Soviet domestic passenger flight from Irkutsk to Leningrad (now Saint Petersburg) with a stopover in Kurgan. On 8 March 1988, after the Tupolev Tu-154 operating the flight had left Kurgan, it was hijacked by the Ovechkin family, whose members sought to defect from the Soviet Union. [2]
The Ovechkin family demanded the crew fly the aircraft to London. [1] However, the flight engineer persuaded them to allow a stopover in Finland for refueling. [1] The aircraft instead landed at the Soviet military airbase Veshchevo, near the Finnish border, where it was stormed by the incident response team of the Soviet interior ministry. [1] During the incident, a flight attendant (Tamara Zharkaya) was shot dead on the orders of the Ovechkin matriarch and three hostages were killed during the storming of the aircraft. Five hijackers committed suicide. Two surviving prosecutable members of the family were sentenced to eight and six years in prison, respectively. Zharkaya was posthumously awarded the Order of the Red Banner as a result of the incident. [3]
The Ovechkin family were from Sosnovka in what is now Perm Krai. [4] At the time of the incident the family consisted of twelve members: mother Nina (Ninel) and her eleven children (seven sons and four daughters). One of the daughters, Lyudmila, did not participate in the hijacking as she was married and lived in another city. [1] After giving birth to the tenth of her eleven children, Ninel was awarded the Soviet distinction of "Mother Heroine". [5]
Following the death of her husband Dmitry in 1984, Ninel raised her children by herself in Irkutsk, Irkutsk Oblast. The boys started a local music band called the Seven Simeons. Following the band's tour of Japan, the Ovechkin family decided to leave the Soviet Union and settle abroad, which was usually not allowed by the government. Rather than seek asylum in Japan or another country and/or refuse to return, the Ovechkins decided to hijack an aircraft. They left a note claiming they were going to meet relatives [1] and boarded a Aeroflot airliner flying from Irkutsk to Leningrad (now Saint Petersburg). [6]
Preparing for hijacking, the Ovechkins acquired arms and made two sawed-off shotguns from them. [1] In case of failure, the Ovechkins decided to blow themselves up rather than face arrest. The family hid their weapons and explosive devices in a double bass, which could not be scanned by airport security devices due to its size. [1]
They had previously checked the security system during a test flight to Leningrad. During the boarding on Flight 3739, airport personnel offered to place the double bass in the luggage section; the Ovechkins refused and paid extra for it to be transported in the cabin. [1] The double bass was checked visually and allowed in the cabin. [1]
Before landing in Leningrad, near Vologda, the flight crew received a note from the hijackers through a flight attendant reading: "Proceed to England (London). Do not descend. Otherwise we will blow up the plane. You are under our control." (The note was subsequently burned in the cabin.) The captain transmitted a distress signal and reported the emergency to Vologda air traffic control. [1]
On the ground, Operation Nabat ("Alarm Bell") was commenced. One of the flight attendants informed the passengers that they were about to land in the Finnish city of Kotka, when in fact the ground services ordered the captain to land at the Soviet air base at Veshchevo. [1] [7] The flight engineer had earlier persuaded the hijackers that the aircraft needed to refuel in order to reach London.[ citation needed ]
Shortly before landing, the hijackers realized that they were in fact still in Soviet territory. One of the hijackers, Dmitry Ovechkin Jr., killed flight attendant Tamara Zharkaya (aged 28). After the aircraft landed, five incident response team members in bulletproof vests stormed the cockpit. From there, eyewitnesses reported, they fired indiscriminately into the cabin. Another group stormed the aircraft from the rear. One of the Ovechkins shouted via the intercom to the crew: "Commander, tell them not to shoot!" [1]
During the storming of the aircraft, Alexander Ovechkin detonated his explosive device and died; the explosion had limited effect and only led to a fire in the aircraft's tail section which was extinguished by crew. [1] [7]
Ninel Ovechkin, who had ordered her sons to kill her and themselves in case of failure, was shot dead by the oldest son Vasily (aged 26). He immediately killed himself afterwards. Three brothers, Dmitry (aged 24), Oleg (aged 21), and Aleksandr (aged 19) let off a hand-made bomb, causing a fire in the plane, and then shot themselves. 17-year-old Igor hid in a toilet to save his life. 28-year-old pregnant Olga Ovechkin and her four youngest siblings (Tatiana, aged 14; Mikhail, aged 13; Ulyana, aged 10; and Sergei, aged 9), also survived. [7] [1]
In addition to Zharkaya, fatalities among the hostages included three passengers (two women, aged 69 and 70, and a 24 year old man) who were accidentally killed during the storming of the aircraft. [1] About twenty passengers were injured (thirty-six according to another estimate [7] ); fourteen severely. [1]
The two oldest surviving Ovechkins, Igor and Olga, were tried on 6 September 1988, and sentenced to eight and six years in prison, respectively. [7] While in prison, Olga Ovechkina gave birth to a daughter, Larisa. Olga was beaten to death by her boyfriend on 8 June 2003. [8]
In the aftermath of the hijacking, the norms of Soviet airport security were revised and the safety of hostages was prioritised. The revised practices prevented deaths, particularly during the 1988 Ordzhonikidze bus hijacking and the 1990 Soviet aircraft hijackings. [7]
Zharkaya, who had tried to appease the hijackers but was ultimately killed by one of them, received the Order of the Red Banner posthumously. [3]
The incident was adapted into the 1999 film Mother by Russian director Denis Yevstigneyev.
PJSC Aeroflot – Russian Airlines, commonly known as Aeroflot, is the flag carrier and the largest airline of Russia. Aeroflot is headquartered in the Central Administrative Okrug, Moscow, with its hub being Sheremetyevo International Airport. The Federal Agency for State Property Management, an agency of the Government of Russia, owns 73.77% of the company, with the rest of the shares being public float.
The Tupolev Tu-104 is a retired medium-range, narrow-body, twin turbojet-powered Soviet airliner. It was the second to enter regular service, behind the British de Havilland Comet and was the only jetliner operating in the world from 1956 to 1958, when the British jetliner was grounded due to safety concerns.
The Yakovlev Yak-42 is a 100/120-seat three-engined mid-range passenger jet developed in the mid 1970s to replace the technically obsolete Tupolev Tu-134. It was the first airliner produced in the Soviet Union to be powered by modern high-bypass turbofan engines.
S7 Airlines Flight 778(S7778/SBI778) was a scheduled domestic passenger flight from Moscow to Irkutsk, Russia. On 9 July 2006, at 06:44 local time, the Airbus A310-324 aircraft operating the route overran the runway during its landing in Irkutsk. The aircraft failed to stop and crashed through the airport's concrete perimeter fence, struck rows of private garages and burst into flames, killing 125 people.
Veshchevo is a rural locality on Karelian Isthmus, in Vyborgsky District of Leningrad Oblast, and a station of the Vyborg–Zhitkovo railroad. The railway track between Veshchevo and Zhitkovo was, however, dismantled in 2001. Until the Winter War and Continuation War, it had been the administrative center of the Heinjoki municipality of the Viipuri rovince of Finland.
The Ilyushin Il-12 was a Soviet twin-engine cargo aircraft, developed in the mid-1940s for small and medium-haul airline routes and as a military transport.
Aeroflot Flight 244 was hijacked on 15 October 1970, making it the first known successful airline hijacking in the Soviet Union.
Aeroflot Flight 902 was a passenger flight on a scheduled domestic service from Khabarovsk to Moscow, with intermediate stops at Irkutsk and Omsk, Russia. The flight was operated by a Tu-104A aircraft. On 30 June 1962, with 76 passengers and 8 crew members aboard, the flight departed Irkutsk on schedule, and made a timely report 50 kilometers from Krasnoyarsk. A few minutes later, an agitated voice later identified as that of the co-pilot made an incoherent emergency transmission with a background of an unusual noise. Repeated subsequent attempts to contact the flight failed.
Founded in 1923, Aeroflot, the flag carrier and largest airline of Russia, has had a high number of fatal crashes, with a total of 8,231 passengers dying in Aeroflot crashes according to the Aircraft Crashes Record Office, mostly during the Soviet era, about five times more than any other airline. From 1946 to 1989, the carrier was involved in 721 incidents. From 1995 to 2017, the carrier was involved in 10 incidents. In 2013, AirlineRatings.com reported that five of the ten aircraft models involved in the highest numbers of fatal accidents were old Soviet models.
The following is a list of accidents and incidents experienced by Aeroflot during the 1980s. The deadliest accident the carrier experienced in this decade occurred in July 1985, when Flight 5143, a Tupolev Tu-154B-2, stalled en route and crashed near Uchkuduk, then located in the Uzbek SSR, claiming the lives of all 200 occupants aboard the aircraft. The second deadliest accident the company went through in the decade took place in October 1984, when Flight 3352, a Tupolev Tu-154B-1, hit snowploughs upon landing at Omsk Airport, killing 174 of 179 people on board plus four people on the ground. Both accidents combined left a death toll of 378 casualties and involved a Tupolev Tu-154, ranking as the worst ones involving the type, as of February 2012.
Nadezhda Vladimirovna Kurchenko was a Soviet flight attendant who tried to prevent the hijacking of Aeroflot Flight 244. Having warned the crew, Kurchenko sought to block the entrance to the cockpit, which at the time was not normally locked. She was killed in a struggle with one of the hijackers.
Aeroflot Flight 3739 was a regularly scheduled Russian domestic flight from Irkutsk to Pulkovo Airport in Saint Petersburg that crashed during takeoff from Irkutsk International Airport on 9 February 1976. Twenty-four of the 114 people on board died in the accident.
Ovechkin is a Russian masculine surname, its feminine counterpart is Ovechkina. People with the name include:
Aeroflot Flight 1912 was a scheduled domestic Aeroflot passenger flight on the Odessa-Kiev (Kyiv)-Chelyabinsk-Novosibirsk-Irkutsk-Khabarovsk-Vladivostok route that crashed on 25 July 1971, making a hard landing at Irkutsk Airport. It touched down 150 metres (490 ft) short of the runway, breaking the left wing and catching fire. Of the 126 people on board the aircraft, 29 survived.
Aeroflot Flight 109 was a scheduled domestic passenger flight from Moscow to Chita with stopovers in Chelyabinsk, Novosibirsk, and Irkutsk. On the final leg of the route on 18 May 1973 a terrorist hijacked the aircraft, demanding to be flown to China; the terrorist's bomb detonated in flight after he was shot by the air marshal.
Aeroflot Flight B-2 was a regularly scheduled passenger flight operated by Aeroflot from Vitim Airport in the Sakha Republic to Irkutsk International Airport near Irkutsk. On 20 July 1977, the Avia 14 operating this flight crashed into trees outside the airport shortly after takeoff. Thirty-three passengers and all six crewmembers were killed, while one passenger survived.
Aeroflot Flight 19 was a scheduled passenger flight from Bykovo Airport, Moscow, to Bryansk Airport, Bryansk. On 2 November 1973, a Yak-40 aircraft operating the flight was hijacked by 4 people 10 minutes before landing. The aircraft was then diverted to Moscow's Vnukovo Airport, where the hijackers demanded a buyout and provision of a flight to Sweden. The hostages inside the aircraft were subsequently liberated after the authorities stormed the aeroplane. This is one of the first well-known cases of storming a hijacked aircraft on the territory of the USSR.
Aeroflot Flight 2420 was a passenger flight from Leningrad-Shosseynaya Airport to Sheremetyevo International Airport that, on April 23, 1973, was hijacked by a passenger demanding to go to Stockholm. The crew returned to Leningrad but the hijacker detonated the bomb, killing himself and the mechanic, who had gone out to negotiate with the hijacker.