In Tatarstan, the L-410 aircraft of the Menzelinsky flying club DOSAAF crashed, taking off for parachute jumps. The crash killed 16 people, including 2 crew members, instructors and parachutists. Six survived. The plane crashed after a few minutes after takeoff, one of its engines failed. The pilot tried to return the car to the airfield, but did not reach 500 m to the runway. The large number of deaths is explained, among other things, by the fact that during the fall, the L-410 touched the Gazelle wing, turned over and collapsed. Mourning has been declared in Tatarstan. A criminal case has been initiated into the plane crash.
The L-410 aircraft of the DOSAAF flying club with 2 crew members – the commander of the aircraft, 60-year-old Mikhail Belyaev and the pilot, 61-year-old Alexander Zykov, as well as 20 paratroopers on board took off from the Menzelinsk airfield at about 9:05 on Sunday. At 9:11 am, the emergency services received a message about his hard landing. The body of the aircraft fell in two, the nose was smashed. The rescue operation lasted about two hours. During it, 16 dead and 6 injured were removed from the plane.
According to preliminary data, the plane managed to climb to a height of 70 m, after which the crew reported to the ground about the failure of the left engine and asked for an emergency landing. After that, the pilot tried to make a left turn and return to the airfield.
Apparently, the low speed and heavy workload did not allow the aircraft to gain additional altitude, which would allow a successful maneuver, and the L-410 rushed to the ground.
As the President of Tatarstan Rustam Minnikhanov, who visited the scene of the tragedy, later added to the picture of the state of emergency, when approaching the ground, the plane touched the wing of a standing Gazel car, turned over and crashed.
The head of the Menzelinsky district, Aydar Salakhov, in turn, said that, according to the preliminary version, the reason for the engine failure was the fact that a bird got into it. “Literally 500 meters from the runway, the plane crashed,” the official added.
Immediately after the crash, there were reports of overloading of the vehicle. According to the Menzelinsky flying club website, the L-410 aircraft is designed for 19 passengers and 2 crew members. Initially, the regional department of the Ministry of Emergency Situations reported that during the rescue operation, 16 dead and 7 people “with signs of life” were removed from the plane. However, later it turned out that the rescuers took the relative of one of the passengers who had arrived at the crash site for the victim: he became ill and was hospitalized.
The Menzelinsky Aero Club is based on the territory of a sports airfield 3 km from Menzelinsk. Here they perform tandem jumps, sports jumps from a height of 4 thousand meters, issue Russian skydiver certificates, teach free fall under the AFF program (accelerated skydiving training program) and train tandem masters and AFF instructors. The club had two planes at its disposal: in addition to the crashed L-410, there was also an An-28.
Parachuting lovers from different regions came to Menzelinsk to train. For example, Pavel Muzychenko, the former head of the Office Group congress bureau in Bashkiria, who was among the victims of the disaster, wrote on his Facebook page that he had to travel “250 km to fraternal Tatarstan” for his hobby. Also, traditionally, people come to the club who want to make a jump on any solemn occasion. So, in this tragedy, Konstantin Tsyvinsky died, to whom his brother decided to give the jump on his 18th birthday.
According to the head of the region Aydar Salakhov, in the last flight of L-410, among 20 parachutists there were 6 instructors and 6 novices who were supposed to jump in tandem. On the day of the tragedy, the flight club’s schedule includes a training camp for athletes-parachutists. According to the organization’s website, for clients to climb an airplane to a height of 1–2.5 thousand m costs 1.1 thousand rubles, to a height of 2.6–4 thousand m – 1.3 thousand rubles, a control jump from one instructor from a height of 2-4 thousand meters – 3.5 thousand rubles. On average, according to the flying club’s clients, one jump costs 15 thousand rubles.
The Menzelin flying club also trained cosmonauts. After the accident, it was decided that the Cosmonaut Training Center. Yuri Gagarina will suspend cooperation with the flying club while investigating the causes of the plane crash.
The crashed L-410, according to open sources, has been in operation for more than 34 years – since April 1987 the aircraft has been in the Air Force fleet, and in February 2014 it was transferred to DOSAAF.
According to Mr. Salakhov, “the aircraft has very little flight time,” it “recently” underwent maintenance.
Tatarstan President Rustam Minnikhanov called the incident “a great tragedy.” He promised material assistance to the families of the victims and assistance in delivering bodies to burial sites: in the crash, in addition to nine residents of Tatarstan, four paratroopers from Bashkiria (out of six on board) were killed, two from Udmurtia (out of three) and one from the Chelyabinsk region. In total, there were residents of seven regions on board: in addition to the named ones, these are Mari El, Kirov and Ulyanovsk regions.
October 11 is declared a day of mourning in Tatarstan. On the same date, procedures are planned to identify the bodies and hand them over to relatives for burial.
Doctors assess the condition of most of the victims as stable – they mostly received fractures, no head injuries. Although all of them were placed in intensive care, it is assumed that five will soon be transferred to the general ward. According to regional authorities, one of the victims is in the Republican Clinical Hospital of Kazan. It is possible that he will be transported to a medical facility in Moscow by the Russian Ministry of Emergency Situations Sukhoi Superjet, on which doctors and rescuers arrived in Tatarstan, led by the acting head of the Ministry of Emergency Situations Alexander Chupriyan.
After the plane crash, the 384th Military Investigation Department of the TFR opened a criminal case on violation of traffic safety rules and the operation of air transport, which inadvertently resulted in the death of two or more persons (part 3 of article 263 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation). Criminal investigators of the military investigation department of the TFR in the Central Military District are working on the spot. “Currently, pre-flight documentation is being seized, eyewitnesses of the tragedy are being questioned, other investigative actions are being taken to establish all the circumstances of the incident,” the Investigative Committee said.
Note that this is the third L-410 disaster this year.
On June 19, during a training flight to drop paratroopers at the Tanai airfield near the village of Zhuravlevo, Kemerovo Region, after takeoff, the aircraft’s right engine failed at low altitude. In the fall, both pilots and two parachutists were killed. On September 12, the plane, performing an internal flight on the Irkutsk-Kazachinskoye route, fell 4 km from its destination. Three passengers and the pilot were killed.
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