Aeroflot Flight 8641 was a

Yakovlev Yak-42 The Yakovlev Yak-42 (russian: Яковлев Як-42; NATO reporting name: "Clobber") 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 airli ...

airliner on a domestic scheduled

passenger flight An airline is a company that provides air transport services for traveling passengers and freight. Airlines use aircraft to supply these services and may form partnerships or alliances with other airlines for codeshare agreements, in which ...

from

Leningrad Saint Petersburg ( rus, links=no, Санкт-Петербург, a=Ru-Sankt Peterburg Leningrad Petrograd Piter.ogg, r=Sankt-Peterburg, p=ˈsankt pʲɪtʲɪrˈburk), formerly known as Petrograd (1914–1924) and later Leningrad (1924–1991), i ...

Kyiv Kyiv, also spelled Kiev, is the capital and most populous city of Ukraine. It is in north-central Ukraine along the Dnieper, Dnieper River. As of 1 January 2021, its population was 2,962,180, making Kyiv the List of European cities by populat ...

. On 28 June 1982, the flight crashed south of

Mozyr russian: Мозырь , nickname = , image_skyline = Mazyr Montage (2017).jpg , imagesize = 250px , image_flag = , image_shield = Coat of Arms of Mazyr, Belarus.svg , image_map = , map_caption ...

Belorussian SSR The Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic (BSSR, or Byelorussian SSR; be, Беларуская Савецкая Сацыялістычная Рэспубліка, Bielaruskaja Savieckaja Sacyjalistyčnaja Respublika; russian: Белор� ...

, killing all 132 people on board. The accident was both the first and deadliest crash of a

Yakovlev The JSC A.S. Yakovlev Design Bureau (russian: ОАО Опытно-конструкторское бюро им. А.С. Яковлева) is a Russian aircraft designer and manufacturer (design office prefix Yak). Its head office is in Aeroport D ...

Yak-42, and remains the deadliest aviation accident in Belarus. The cause was a failure of the

jackscrew A jackscrew, or screw jack, is a type of jack that is operated by turning a leadscrew. It is commonly used to lift moderately and heavy weights, such as vehicles; to raise and lower the horizontal stabilizers of aircraft; and as adjustable suppo ...

controlling the

horizontal stabilizer A tailplane, also known as a horizontal stabiliser, is a small lifting surface located on the tail (empennage) behind the main lifting surfaces of a fixed-wing aircraft as well as other non-fixed-wing aircraft such as helicopters and gyroplan ...

due to a

design flaw A product defect is any characteristic of a product which hinders its usability for the purpose for which it was designed and manufactured. Product defects arise most prominently in legal contexts regarding product safety, where the term is applie ...

Aircraft and crew

The

involved in the accident was registered to Aeroflot as CCCP-42529 (manufacturer number 11040104, series number 04-01). The aircraft made its maiden flight on 21 April 1981 and was delivered to Ministry of Civil Aviation on 1 June 1981. At the time of the accident it had 795 flight hours and 496 takeoff and landing cycles. All 124 passenger seats were filled, 11 by children. The cockpit crew consisted of: *

Captain Captain is a title, an appellative for the commanding officer of a military unit; the supreme leader of a navy ship, merchant ship, aeroplane, spacecraft, or other vessel; or the commander of a port, fire or police department, election precinct, e ...

Vyacheslav Nikolaevich Musinsky *

Co-pilot In aviation, the first officer (FO), also called co-pilot, is the pilot who is second-in-command of the aircraft to the captain, who is the legal commander. In the event of incapacitation of the captain, the first officer will assume command o ...

Alexandr Sergeevich Stigarev *

Navigator A navigator is the person on board a ship or aircraft responsible for its navigation.Grierson, MikeAviation History—Demise of the Flight Navigator FrancoFlyers.org website, October 14, 2008. Retrieved August 31, 2014. The navigator's primar ...

-trainee Viktor Ivanovich Kedrov *

Flight engineer A flight engineer (FE), also sometimes called an air engineer, is the member of an aircraft's flight crew who monitors and operates its complex aircraft systems. In the early era of aviation, the position was sometimes referred to as the "air me ...

Nikolai Semenovich Vinogradov

Sequence of events

The aircraft took off from

Pulkovo Airport Pulkovo ( rus, links=no, Пулково, p=ˈpulkəvə) is an international airport serving St. Petersburg, Russia. It consists of one terminal which is located south of the city centre. The airport serves as a airline hub, hub for Rossiya Ai ...

at 9:01

Moscow time Moscow Time (MSK, russian: моско́вское вре́мя) is the time zone for the city of Moscow, Russia, and most of western Russia, including Saint Petersburg. It is the second-westernmost of the eleven time zones of Russia. It has b ...

, having been delayed one minute because of a late passenger. At 10:45 it entered the zone of Kiev/

Boryspil Boryspil ( uk, Бориспіль, translit. ''Boryspil'') is a city and the administrative center of Boryspil Raion in Kyiv Oblast (region) in northern (central) Ukraine. It hosts the administration of Boryspil urban hromada, one of the hromada ...

air traffic control Center. The crew started the landing checklist at 10:48:01. At 10:48:58 the crew informed the

air traffic controller Air traffic control specialists, abbreviated ATCS, are personnel responsible for the safe, orderly, and expeditious flow of air traffic in the global air traffic control system. Usually stationed in air traffic control centers and control ...

they reached the planned

top of descent In aviation, the top of descent, also referred to as the TOD or T/D, is the computed transition from the cruise phase of a flight to the descent phase, or the point at which the planned descent to final approach altitude is initiated. The top of ...

point, the controller clearing them for descent to FL255 (approximately ). The crew confirmed the

flight path In the United States, airways or air routes are defined by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) in two ways: "VOR Federal airways and Low/Medium Frequency (L/MF) (Colored) Federal airways" These are designated routes which aeroplanes ...

; no further communications were heard from Flight 8641. At 10:51:20 the

autopilot An autopilot is a system used to control the path of an aircraft, marine craft or spacecraft without requiring constant manual control by a human operator. Autopilots do not replace human operators. Instead, the autopilot assists the operator' ...

gradually brought about a

angle of up 0.3° for descent for landing. At 10:51:30 the stabilizer angle sharply increased, exceeding the 2° limit within half a second. The sudden change resulted in a negative

g-force The gravitational force equivalent, or, more commonly, g-force, is a measurement of the type of force per unit mass – typically acceleration – that causes a perception of weight, with a g-force of 1 g (not gram in mass measure ...

of -1.5 g, but the autopilot adjusted the controls to lower it to -0.6 g. As the stabilizer did not respond to commands and the plane went on diving, the autopilot switched off after 3 seconds. The pilots pulled back on the

yoke A yoke is a wooden beam sometimes used between a pair of oxen or other animals to enable them to pull together on a load when working in pairs, as oxen usually do; some yokes are fitted to individual animals. There are several types of yoke, us ...

trying to level out the plane, but it continued into a steep

dive Diving most often refers to: * Diving (sport), the sport of jumping into deep water * Underwater diving, human activity underwater for recreational or occupational purposes Diving or Dive may also refer to: Sports * Dive (American football), a ...

; soon it rolled 35° left and the dive achieved 50°. As it rolled counterclockwise with over -2 g of overload, the aircraft disintegrated at 10:51:50 at the altitude of and the instrument speed of . The wreckage was found on the outskirts of Verbavychi village, southeast of the district center

Naroulia Naroulia ( be, Нароўля, russian: Наровля, pl, Narowla) is a town in the Gomel Region, Belarus. The population is 8 026 people as of 2021. In 1986, the city experienced heavy radioactive fallout from the Chernobyl accident. Today it ...

(itself being further 18 km south/west of the larger

which is often listed.) Fragments of the plane were scattered across an area of . All 132 people onboard perished.

Cause

The cause was determined to be a failure of the

mechanism in the aircraft's tail due to

metal fatigue In materials science, fatigue is the initiation and propagation of cracks in a material due to cyclic loading. Once a fatigue crack has initiated, it grows a small amount with each loading cycle, typically producing striations on some parts o ...

, which resulted from flaws in the Yak-42's design. The investigation concluded that among the causes of the crash were poor maintenance, as well as the control system of the stabilizer not meeting basic aviation standards. Three engineers who signed the jackscrew drawings were convicted. As for the official cause of the crash: "the spontaneous movement of the stabilizer was due to disconnection in flight of the jackscrew assembly due to the almost complete deterioration of the 42M5180-42 thread-nuts due to structural imperfections in the mechanism." Due to the accident, all Yak-42s were withdrawn from service until the design defect was rectified in October 1984.Gordon, Komissarov and Komissarov 2005, p. 315.

References

Aircraft and crew

Sequence of events

Cause

See also

References