A big holiday - the New Year - is on the horizon. Passengers of the domestic flight Bishkek - Osh are eagerly awaiting departure on board the Tu-134 of Altyn Air in the livery of “Kyrgyzstan”. The departure is delayed due to weather conditions at Osh airport, but not canceled. There is a tendency for the weather to improve.

Having once again received the requested weather from the Osh airport meteo (wind at the ground 20°, 2 m/s, visibility 500 m, on the runway 750 m, supercooled fog, vertical visibility 60 m, air temperature 0°), the crew decided to perform the flight.

I will allow a few remarks before takeoff. Altyn Air was established by order of the President with the purpose of state support of the national aviation industry and transportation of the country's authorities and passengers on domestic and international routes. In 2006, like the majority of air carriers of the Republic of Kyrgyzstan, it was blacklisted by ICAO. By 2008 the fleet was reduced to three An-24s, two Yak-40s and one Tu-134. The most trained flight crew is retrained on imported equipment and transferred to imported airlines.

The crew of “Tushka” consists of a co-pilot performing his first flight in this capacity and a flight engineer with several hours of flight time on this type. With 82 passengers on board (total number - 88 people), at 12.05 pm the airliner departed from the runway of Manas Airport. The estimated time of landing is 12.48. The crew, straightening the corners as it wishes, goes to the far drive of Osh Airport.

A few facts about the airplane with the flight name EX-020. At the end of the year for its 25 years of service it flew 41 313 hours and made 24 326 landings. According to the extended resources Tu-134 could work further, but for this it was necessary to perform modernization and technical research of the aircraft. Not for free. The management had already made a calculation and decided the fate of Tupol in favor of second-hand Boeing. The airworthiness certificate expired in a month and the airliner went into storage.

By the way, the “small Tupol” is a unique machine of its time. The outstanding feature of the airplane is the unrivaled in the world practice restrictions on the value of the oncoming and side wind speed at landing (30 and 20 m/c respectively). The Boeing 737 has a side wind speed of only 17 m/c. There was a case of landing at a speed of 415 km / h with a bare wing! In the rocket-powered Tu-22 it is under 300. Resources were extended in stages to 55,000 flight hours, 32,000 flights and 40 years, while the Voeing 737 has only 20 years.

Meanwhile, the airliner is approaching Osh International Airport. And there are nuances here too. The airfield is located in a mountainous area, a few kilometers from the Uzbek border. The approach to 12 runways is possible through the limited authorized air “pocket” of Uzbekistan. The ICAO Category I meteo minimum (60 by 550 meters), as well as the status of “international”, were adopted by the majority vote of Manas LLC shareholders without involving air navigation specialists, and submitted to the GA Agency of the Republic for approval. You may ask: “Why was it possible!”(c) Probably.

So. In difficult weather conditions, the airplane makes a rough landing on the runway, as a result of which the right landing gear strut hoist is destroyed. The airplane flips over the right wing plane with its destruction and complete separation. Having stopped in an inverted position on snow-covered ground to the right of the runway, the Tu-134 catches fire. The fire is quickly extinguished by the airport's emergency rescue service. Favor, the airliner almost “moved in” to the fire station.

Who ever thought that after landing an airplane could hang upside down on the belt like a fly? Evacuation, thanks to the coordinated actions of the crew and services, was successful. One passenger was seriously injured, 4 passengers were slightly to moderately injured. The captain was the last to leave the smoking aircraft. The accident miraculously did not become a catastrophe ... The magic of Santa Claus was clearly not missing here.

Specialists of the State Aviation Administration of the Republic were involved in the investigation of the causes, IAC members and independent third-party experts were invited. Only various violations of aviation rules and requirements concerning airline and airport procedures were revealed for several volumes. Thus, the crew (read one CWS) set the aircraft on course and glide path only in the area of the long-range drive beacon (FDRM) at a distance of 4.02 km and at an altitude of 100 meters, although it should have been on this trajectory at a distance of 10.5 km

After receiving weather data from the dispatcher, which did not correspond to the actual weather at the time of landing, the commander, in his words: “was confused, not knowing the procedure for the second go-around” and made a decision to land. The descent was performed on a steep trajectory with increased vertical speed, which led to the landing of the aircraft with a large roll on the right strut at a distance of 97 meters from the end of the runway. The overload amounted to 4.5 g and was destructive to the aircraft structure.

It seems to be sorted out, interviewed, identified, filmed and punished in parallel. Everything is clear. But... there is a parallel “investigation on investigation”. On the fact of the accident a criminal case on the grounds of “violation of the rules of safety of movement and operation of air transport” is initiated and an interdepartmental investigative group of employees of the transport prosecutor's office and the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Republic is created. And their conclusions, already at the first stage, differ significantly from the conclusions of aviators.

We will leave the volumes with violations of rules unchanged, they only increased the level of guilty persons. We forget about the airline, we look for it in the GA Agency. And we change the method of “questioning” to “interrogation”.

As a result, it turns out that, quote:

“The aircraft touched the runway almost simultaneously with both landing gear struts with an overload of 1.4 and a roll of 1.4 degrees to the right, as evidenced by traces on the runway from the rubber wheels of both landing gear struts. After touchdown the aircraft did not separate from the runway, which occurs only when performing a rough landing with an overload exceeding 2 - 2.5g. After touchdown with normal operational overload (rated “good”), the aircraft began to break up as a result of fatigue defects and damage sustained earlier in the operation. The exact moment of separation of the right wing plane could not be established, but at a distance of about 270 meters from the end of the runway the aircraft had a roll of 58 degrees towards the right wing, i.e. the wing had already separated and the aircraft continued to move along the runway on the right side of the fuselage and the left landing gear strut”.

The investigators come to this conclusion based on the fact that the IAC has seized and re-decoded the recorders. When questioned, the pilot-in-command and co-pilot stated that they themselves, without the information obtained during the decoding, could not objectively assess the quality of the landing. At the same time, literally: “they subjectively accepted the fact of the airplane destruction as a rough landing”. The IAC specialist refused to be questioned, citing his Russian citizenship.