Aeroflot Flight 3603 was a

Tupolev Tu-154 The Tupolev Tu-154 (russian: Tyполев Ту-154; NATO reporting name: "Careless") 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 ...

operating a scheduled domestic passenger flight from

Krasnoyarsk Krasnoyarsk ( ; rus, Красноя́рск, a=Ru-Красноярск2.ogg, p=krəsnɐˈjarsk) (in semantic translation - Red Ravine City) is the largest city and administrative center of Krasnoyarsk Krai, Russia. It is situated along the Y ...

to Noril'sk, both in the

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nationa ...

, that crashed while attempting to land on 17 November 1981. Of the 167 passengers and crew on board, 99 were killed in the accident.

Accident

It was dark and there was a low overcast with a cloud base of around when the Tupolev Tu-154 began its approach to Noril'sk Airport. The aircraft was about above its calculated weight and its

center of gravity In physics, the center of mass of a distribution of mass in space (sometimes referred to as the balance point) is the unique point where the weighted relative position of the distributed mass sums to zero. This is the point to which a force ma ...

was beyond the forward limit for the type. The nose heavy condition caused Flight 3603 to descend below the glide path as it made its final approach. The Captain initiated a go-around maneuver but the aeroplane impacted terrain approximately short of the runway, striking a mound in an open field and sliding across the frozen ground for about 300 m . Four crew members and 95 passengers were killed in the accident.

Causes

The primary cause of the accident was the failure of the crew to accurately calculate the appropriate landing weight, failing to align with the runway at the proper approach speed, failing to abort the landing and go-around in time, and failing to maintain control of the auto-throttle.

References

{{Aviation accidents and incidents in the Soviet Union 1981 in the Soviet Union Aviation accidents and incidents in 1981 Aviation accidents and incidents caused by pilot error Airliner accidents and incidents involving controlled flight into terrain Aviation accidents and incidents in Russia Aviation accidents and incidents in the Soviet Union Accidents and incidents involving the Tupolev Tu-154 3603 November 1981 events in Europe