Aeroflot Flight 6502

Aeroflot Flight 6502

An Aeroflot Tu-134A, similar to that involved in the accident
Accident
Date	20 October 1986 (1986-10-20)
Summary	Runway overrun due to pilot recklessness
Site	Kuibyshev Airport, Soviet Union 53°30′22″N 50°9′36″E
Aircraft
Aircraft type	Tupolev Tu-134A
Operator	Aeroflot
Registration	CCCP-65766
Flight origin	Koltsovo Airport, Soviet Union
Stopover	Kuibyshev Airport, Soviet Union
Destination	Grozny Airport, Soviet Union
Occupants	94
Passengers	87
Crew	7
Fatalities	70
Survivors	24

Aeroflot Flight 6502 was a Soviet domestic passenger flight operated by a Tupolev Tu-134A from Sverdlovsk (now Yekaterinburg) to Grozny via Kuibyshev (now Samara), which crashed in Kuibyshev on 20 October 1986. Seventy of the 94 passengers and crew on board were killed when the plane overran the runway, after the pilot made a bet that he could make an instrument-only approach with curtained cockpit windows. Investigators determined the cause of the accident was pilot negligence.

Background

The crew of the Tu-134A aircraft, serial number 62327 manufactured on 28 June 1979, consisted of pilot in command Alexander Kliuyev, co-pilot Gennady Zhirnov, navigating officer Ivan Mokhonko, flight engineer Kyuri Khamzatov, and three flight attendants. Having departed from Koltsovo Airport in Yekaterinburg (then Sverdlovsk) and bound for Grozny, Flight 6502 had one stopover at Kurumoch Airport in Samara (then Kuibyshev).

The wreckage of flight 6502

Crash

While approaching Kurumoch Airport, Captain Kliuyev made a bet with First Officer Zhirnov that he could make an instrument-only approach with curtained cockpit windows, thus having no visual contact with the ground, instead of an NDB approach, suggested by the air traffic control. Kliuyev further ignored the ground-proximity warning at an altitude of 62–65 metres (203–213 ft) and did not make the suggested go-around. The aircraft touched down on the runway at a speed of 150 knots (280 km/h; 170 mph) and came to rest upside down after overrunning the runway. Sixty-three people died during the accident and seven more in hospitals later. Among the passengers were 14 children, all of whom survived the accident. The top-secret report of the chairman of Kuibyshev oblispolkom V. A. Pogodin to Premier Nikolai Ryzhkov gave slightly different figures: Of 85 passengers and eight crew members aboard, 53 passengers and five crew members died in the crash and 11 more in hospitals later.

Though Zhirnov made no attempt to avert the crash, he subsequently tried to save the passengers and died of cardiac arrest while on the way to the hospital. Kliuyev was prosecuted and sentenced to 15 years in prison, later reduced to six years served.

See also

• National Airlines Flight 27, where in-flight experimentation possibly caused an uncontained engine failure
• Northwest Airlines Flight 188, where the pilots stopped monitoring the flight
• Pinnacle Airlines Flight 3701, a crash where the pilots chose, for fun, to exceed aircraft limits
• Aeroflot Flight 593, a crash where the pilots let minors fly the aircraft
• United Airlines Flight 2885, a crash where the pilots let the flight engineer fly the plane