Almost 20 years ago, one of the worst air disasters in history took place, killing 170 passengers. A severe storm caused the plane to never reach its destination. , the black box picked up the crew’s panic as they desperately tried to stop the crash.
- The plane of Pulkovo Aviation Enterprise crashed unexpectedly almost 20 years ago.
- About thirty minutes into the flight, the crew encountered a strong storm.
- After turning off the autopilot, the angle of attack increased rapidly, leading to a crash.
- The machine eventually crashed in the east of Ukraine.
- All 170 people on board died in the tragedy.
On August 22, 2006, Flight 612 of Pulkovo Aviation Enterprise took off on a routine route from the Russian city of Anapa to St. Petersburg. However, problems arose approximately 30 minutes after takeoff when the crew encountered an extremely strong thunderstorm. In an effort to rescue, the pilot requested permission to fly to a height of almost 12 kilometers to avoid turbulence.
Although the dispatcher quickly gave the pilot permission, the situation in the cockpit began to deteriorate sharply. At 3:35 p.m., the autopilot was turned off, which almost immediately led to the activation of the crash warning signal. The plane’s angle of attack increased up to 46 degrees, while its speed dropped critically. The machine entered a so-called deep stall, a dangerous aerodynamic condition from which even the most experienced pilots often cannot escape.
The plane ended up in a huge storm. (illustrative photo)
Source:
iStock
On the audio recording from the cockpit, the growing panic is completely clear. As the storm raged through the plane, the captain turned to his co-pilot and asked if they could move a little further away from the cloudburst.
Subsequently, on the record according to the foreign website several other crew members are heard asking the captain to descend, but he ignores them and is supposed to call them “idiots”. He then gives orders to the others in the cockpit, asking them to remain calm. In the end, however, he clearly realizes the seriousness of the whole situation and says: “We are really falling.” The very last words were spoken by a man who is identified in the official transcript as a pilot in training. “I don’t want to die, I don’t want to die… Don’t kill us, please” he shouted.
Three minutes later, at exactly 3:38 p.m., the plane hit the ground near the village of Sukhaya Balka in eastern Ukraine, about 45 kilometers northwest of Donetsk. Witnesses later reported seeing the plane fall rapidly from the sky, bursting into flames immediately after impact.
Investigators concluded that the crash was caused by the aircraft going into manual control at an excessive angle of attack, which led to the crash. The final report also stated that the main factors in the disaster were insufficient training and poor cooperation of the crew, which caused the whole situation to escalate to the fatal loss of control over the machine.
