Accident | |
---|---|
Date | 1 January 2011 |
Summary | Electrical fire during taxiing |
Site | Surgut International Airport, Surgut, Russia 61°20′30″N73°24′10″E / 61.34167°N 73.40278°E |
Aircraft | |
Aircraft type | Tupolev Tu-154B-2 |
Operator | Kogalymavia |
IATA flight No. | 7K348 |
ICAO flight No. | KGL348 |
Call sign | KOGALYM348 |
Registration | RA-85588 |
Flight origin | Surgut International Airport, Surgut, Russia |
Destination | Domodedovo International Airport, Moscow, Russia |
Occupants | 134 |
Passengers | 126 |
Crew | 8 |
Fatalities | 3 |
Injuries | 43 |
Survivors | 131 |
On 1 January 2011, Kolavia Flight 348, a Tupolev Tu-154 on a domestic scheduled passenger flight from Surgut to Moscow, Russia, caught fire while taxiing out for take-off. Passengers were evacuated, but three were killed and 43 injured. A subsequent investigation concluded that the fire had started in an electric panel for which maintenance was never prescribed. [1]
On the morning of 1 January 2011, Flight 348 was preparing to depart at Surgut International Airport for a flight to Moscow. At 10:00 local time (05:00 UTC), as the aircraft was being pushed back and was starting its engines, a fire developed in the centre section of the fuselage, quickly spreading inside the passenger cabin. [1]
The engines and the APU were immediately shut down and the emergency slides were deployed. Within four minutes, fire engines reached the Tupolev and started dousing the flames with foam, but were hampered by the presence of survivors near the aircraft. By 10:20, the aircraft was completely ablaze, with aviation fuel leaking and spreading the flames across the apron. [1]
The fire was brought under control at around 10:40; by then, only the tail section and the outer portion of the wings had survived the blaze. Three passengers were killed and 43 were injured, four critically, from smoke inhalation or burns. [2] [3] [4]
The aircraft involved was a tri-jet Tupolev Tu-154B-2, registration RA-85588, msn 83A/588. The aircraft first flew in 1983. It entered service with Aeroflot as CCCP-85588 and was re-registered RA-85588 in 1993. It then served with Mavial Magadan Airlines between 1994 and 1999, when it began service with Vladivostok Air. Kogalymavia (trading as Kolavia) acquired the aircraft in 2007. [5]
The aircraft was carrying 116 passengers, 8 crew, and 10 off-duty employees of Kogalymavia, [1] although a statement by the Russia's Ministry of Health and Social Development gave figures of 117 passengers and 18 crew. [6] Among the passengers were members of the 1990s Russian boy band Na Na, who managed to evacuate safely from the plane. [2]
Following the accident, Russia's Federal Transport Oversight Agency advised airlines that they should stop using the Tu-154B until the accident had been investigated. [7] This would affect 14 aircraft, all other Tu-154s in service are Tu-154Ms. Kogalymavia pledged to pay compensation of руб 20,000 to those passengers involved in the accident. The Russian insurance company Sogaz stated that those injured in the accident would receive between руб 20,000 and руб 2,000,000 compensation. The families of those killed would receive руб 2,000,000 compensation. Authorities in the Khanty–Mansi Autonomous Okrug – Yugra had allocated руб 10,000,000 to assist the families of those injured in the accident.[ citation needed ]
Russia's Interstate Aviation Committee (MAK) opened an investigation into the accident. [8] A separate criminal investigation was opened to investigate allegations of breaching transport and fire safety rules. Both flight recorders were recovered and analysed. [7] Russia's Ministry of Emergency Situations stated that the initial investigations pointed towards an electrical short circuit being the cause of the fire, which started in the central area of the fuselage, ahead of the rear-mounted engines. [9]
In September 2011, the MAK released its final report in Russian, confirming that the probable cause of the fire was an arc occurring in an electric panel on the right side of the fuselage hosting the generator contactors. Shortly after engine start, the crew connected the generators to the electrical network as usual, but the badly worn out contactors failed to operate properly, resulting in an abnormal circuit configuration that produced currents 10 to 20 times higher than their nominal values, giving rise to an electrical arc. The MAK determined that no maintenance schedule existed for the electric board in question. [1]
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 Tupolev Tu-154 is a three-engined, medium-range, narrow-body airliner designed in the mid-1960s and manufactured by Tupolev. A workhorse of Soviet and (subsequently) Russian airlines for several decades, it carried half of all passengers flown by Aeroflot and its subsidiaries, remaining the standard domestic-route airliner of Russia and former Soviet states until the mid-2000s. It was exported to 17 non-Russian airlines and used as a head-of-state transport by the air forces of several countries.
From 20 to 23 September 1993, during the Sukhumi massacre, separatists in Sukhumi, Abkhazia blocked Georgian troops' overland supply routes as part of the war in Abkhazia. In response, the Georgian government used Sukhumi Babushara Airport to ferry supplies to troops stationed in Sukhumi. Abkhaz forces attacked the airport in an attempt to further block the supply routes.
The Tupolev Tu-204 is a twin-engined medium-range narrow-body jet airliner capable of carrying 210 passengers, designed by Tupolev and produced by Aviastar-SP and Kazan Aircraft Production Association. First introduced in 1989, it was intended to be broadly equivalent to the Boeing 757, with slightly lower range and payload, and had competitive performance and fuel efficiency in its class. It was developed for Aeroflot as a replacement for the medium-range Tupolev Tu-154 trijet. The latest version, with significant upgrades and improvements, is the Tu-204SM, which made its maiden flight on 29 December 2010. In April 2022, United Aircraft Corporation (UAC) announced plans to assemble 70 Tu-214s by 2030.
Kogalymavia, DBA Metrojet, was a Russian airline based in Kogalym, Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug. Its home base was at Kogalym International Airport, with the main hub at Domodedovo International Airport in Moscow. It suspended all operations in December 2015, two months after the terrorist attack on Flight 9268.
Aviastar-TU Airlines is a Russian cargo charter airline which operates principally out of Ramenskoye Airport in Moscow, Russia. Its headquarters is located in Zhukovsky, Moscow Oblast.
UTair Flight 471 was a scheduled domestic passenger flight of a Tupolev Tu-134 on 17 March 2007, that suffered heavy structural damage during a hard landing at Samara Kurumoch Airport near Samara, Russia. Of the 50 passengers and 7 crew members on board, 6 people were killed and 20 injured when the aircraft broke apart. The plane was flying from the Siberian city of Surgut to Samara and then to Belgorod.
Aeroflot Flight 5143 was a domestic scheduled Karshi–Ufa–Leningrad passenger flight that crashed near Uchkuduk, Uzbek SSR, Soviet Union, on 10 July 1985. The crash killed all 200 occupants on board. Investigators determined that crew fatigue was a factor in the accident.
Aeroflot Flight 3352 was a regularly scheduled Aeroflot flight from Krasnodar to Novosibirsk, with an intermediate landing in Omsk. While landing at Omsk Airport on Thursday, 11 October 1984, the aircraft crashed into maintenance vehicles on the runway, killing 174 people on board and four on the ground. While a chain of mistakes in airport operations contributed to the accident, its major cause was an air traffic controller falling asleep on duty. As of 2022, this remains the deadliest aviation accident on Russian territory. It was also the deadliest aviation accident involving a Tupolev Tu-154 at the time until the crash of Aeroflot Flight 5143 nine months later; as of 2023, it still ranks as the second-deadliest accident involving a Tupolev Tu-154. The tragedy was kept secret for twenty years, until Komsomolskaya Pravda published an article in 2004.
Caspian Airlines Flight 7908 was a scheduled commercial flight from Tehran, Iran, to Yerevan, Armenia, that crashed near the village of Jannatabad, outside the city of Qazvin in north-western Iran, on 15 July 2009. All 153 passengers and 15 crew on board died.
Vnukovo Airlines was a Russian airline which had its corporate headquarters at Vnukovo International Airport in Moscow. It was created as a spin-off from the Vnukovo Airport division of Aeroflot in March 1993 and operated until 2001, when it was bought by Siberian Airlines.
Alrosa Flight 514 was a Tupolev Tu-154 passenger jet on a domestic scheduled flight from Udachny to Moscow, Russia, that on 7 September 2010 made a successful emergency landing at a remote airstrip after suffering an in-flight total electrical failure. All 81 people on board escaped unharmed.
Dagestan Airlines Flight 372 was a scheduled commercial flight between Moscow's Vnukovo Airport and Makhachkala, Russia. On 4 December 2010, the Tupolev Tu-154 operating the flight skidded off the runway following an emergency landing at Domodedovo Airport, 45 km south-east of Vnukovo. Two people on board were killed.
Aeroflot Flight 4225 was a Tupolev Tu-154B-2 on a scheduled domestic passenger flight from Alma-Ata Airport to Simferopol Airport on 8 July 1980. The aircraft had reached an altitude of no more than 500 feet when the airspeed suddenly dropped because of thermal currents it encountered during the climb out. This caused the airplane to stall less than 5 kilometres from the airport, crash and catch fire, killing all 156 passengers and 10 crew on board. To date, it remains the deadliest aviation accident in Kazakhstan.
Aeroflot Flight 3519 was a Tupolev Tu-154B-2 airline flight on a domestic route from Krasnoyarsk to Irkutsk on 23 December 1984. Shortly after takeoff, the No. 3 engine caught fire, and the airplane crashed during an emergency landing. This killed 110 people; there was only one survivor, and the aircraft was destroyed. The engine fire was caused by a manufacturing defect in the compressor disk.
Khabarovsk United Air Group Flight 3949 was a Russian domestic passenger flight from Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk to Khabarovsk, that crashed on 7 December 1995 local time, killing all ninety-eight people aboard. The crash occurred after the aircraft had entered into a steep downward spiral during automated flight at an altitude of 10,600 metres (34,800 ft).
On 25 December 2016, a Tupolev Tu-154 jetliner of the Russian Defence Ministry crashed into the Black Sea shortly after taking off from Sochi International Airport, Russia, while en route to Khmeimim Air Base, Syria. All 92 passengers and crew on board, including 64 members of the Alexandrov Ensemble choir of the Russian Armed Forces, were killed. The aircraft had flown from Chkalovsky Airport and had landed at Sochi to refuel.
Aeroflot Flight 6709 was a Tupolev Tu-154B on a domestic route from Baku to Leningrad on 19 May 1978. While cruising, fuel starvation affected the flow of fuel to the aircraft's three Kuznetsov NK-8 engines, causing the engines to stop. This issue was possibly as a result of poor aircraft design.
Aeroflot Flight 699 was a scheduled flight, operated by Tupolev Tu-154B CCCP-85254, from Moscow Domodedovo Airport to Krasnovodsk Airport that crashed on approach to its destination.