The tragedy in Rostov-on-Don happened on the night of March 18-19, 2016. The Boeing 737 airliner crashed while landing. The plane performed a regular flight from the United Arab Emirates.
The crew tried to land in difficult weather conditions for two hours, but failed. All died. Onboard there were 62 people. The investigation into the crash in Rostov is being conducted by the Interstate Aviation Committee together with experts from the UAE, Russia, France and the USA.
Board number 981
The plane crashed in Rostov-on-Don belonged to Fly Dubay. This is the state low-cost airline from the UAE. He is led by 57-year-old Sheikh Ahmed bin Saeed Al-Maktoum, who owns another well-known
airline Emirates Airline.
In turn, Fly Dubay has been operating since 2009, performing regular and charter flights to almost 50 countries in hundreds of destinations. Including in 10 Russian cities. In Rostov-on-Don - twice a week for the past three years. Only Boeings were on the company's balance sheet.
It should be noted that the carrier was distinguished by high safety indicators. Before the crash in Rostov-on-Don, the company did not have a single incident with human casualties. After the tragedy, the airline pilots, on condition of anonymity, admitted to the foreign media that they often experienced overwork, because the work schedule was too busy and could not fully relax.
Boeing 737
The crashed Boeing was a fairly new aircraft. It was built in the USA in 2011 specifically for Fly Dubay.
The aircraft was equipped with two turbofan engines. At the time of the accident, it spent 21-odd thousand hours in the air, performing more than 9 thousand cycles on the take-off-landing system. The airliner has never needed to be repaired; it was serviced on time and without problems. Last time - two months before the disaster.
At the same time, the aircraft was not crowded: the liner was designed to carry 189 passengers, on the same day there were only 55 people on board, not counting the crew members. The fuel should have been enough for 8 and a half hours of flight, the plane stayed in the air for no more than 6 hours.
Crew
The liner was controlled by the ship's commander, 38-year-old Aristos Socrates, a native of Cyprus. In his practice, almost 6 thousand hours of flight. It is worth noting that in Fly Dubay, as in most other airlines, they did not appoint a pilot who did not fly 5 thousand hours.
As a commander of the ship, Sokratus worked for a year and a half. At the same time, on the eve of the plane crash in Rostov, he filed a letter of resignation. According to colleagues, this was due to overwork and heavy loads at Fly Dubay. Less than a month after the tragedy, his firstborn was born in his family.
The co-pilot was the 37-year-old Spaniard Alejandro Alava Cruz. He also had nearly 6 thousand hours of flight practice. Both pilots did not land in Rostov for the first time.
Also among the crew members were 5 flight attendants - natives of Russia, Kyrgyzstan, Colombia, Spain and Seychelles.
Weather
Many associate the causes of the crash in Rostov with weather conditions; they were not easy that night. The wind speed at the surface of the earth reached 13 meters per second, with gusts - up to 18. Visibility - about 7 kilometers, there was light heavy rain. At an altitude of 900 meters to one and a half kilometers, moderate icing was observed.
At the same time, as experts say, in general weather conditions were difficult, but they should not have prevented a regular landing.
Flight
The plane took off from Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates, at 21.45 local time and was supposed to be at Rostov Airport at 1.20 Moscow time. However, the departure was delayed for half an hour, and the approximate landing time was postponed. Among the alternate aerodromes for the side were provided sites in Krasnodar and Volgograd.
The flight itself took place without incident. At 1.30, the pilots began manual piloting, the plane first tried to land. Less than half an hour before, two aircraft of other airlines landed in Rostov. At an altitude of 340 meters, the crew received a warning from the aircraft security systems about a dangerous wind on the landing strip. Information about this was transmitted to controllers on the ground and decided to stop the approach.
For two hours, the crew was waiting for weather conditions to improve 60 kilometers from Rostov-on-Don. At about the same time, an Aeroflot airliner tried to land in Rostov, but after several unsuccessful attempts, it decided to land at the alternate airport in Krasnodar.
Second attempt
At 3.23 flight No. 981 asked the dispatchers for permission to re-land and began to decline. At an altitude of 600 meters from the ground, the crew turned off automatic control and continued to work in manual mode. At 3.40 the aircraft was at an altitude of 220 meters, 4 and a half kilometers from the start of the runway. Boeing increased speed and began to climb. About a thousand meters from the ground, the liner dropped sharply and crashed into the ground.
Rostov dispatchers immediately reported the tragedy to the Ministry of Emergencies. The rescue operation began. It was attended by 840 people and more than 100 pieces of equipment.
The video and photo of the crash in Rostov shows that the plane crashes into the ground at a very steep angle. Based on the small radius of the debris scattering, experts conclude that the plane crash in Rostov occurred at high speed. In a collision with the ground, more than 300 square meters of the runway were destroyed, the Rostov airport was closed until March 21.
Disaster victims
The dead in a plane crash in Rostov are citizens of 9 states: Russia, Ukraine, Kyrgyzstan, India, Uzbekistan, Cyprus, Seychelles, Spain and Colombia. Only 62 people, 7 of them are crew members. The four dead are children.
Almost all the victims of the crash are Russian citizens flying from vacation from the UAE. Almost all were customers of a popular travel company in the country.
There was a happy salvation. Russian Elvar Isaeva was late for the transfer from the hotel to the airport and did not have time for the ill-fated flight. As it turned out later, the day before she celebrated her birthday with her friend, which is why she returned to the hotel late. She later flew safely from Dubai.
Rescuers during the investigation found almost 5 thousand fragments of the bodies of the dead. The identification of the remains took about two months.
Families of the victims received compensation - one million rubles each. The leadership of the Rostov region declared mourning for the victims whose life was interrupted by a plane crash in Rostov-on-Don. The dead were citizens of different countries, so they mourned that day, not only in Russia.
The beginning of the investigation
The IAC took up the cause of the crash in Rostov-on-Don. Experts from the United Arab Emirates, the USA (where the plane was assembled) and France (the engine developing country) were also involved. To assess the actions of pilots, test pilots from Russia, the USA and the UAE were involved.
The Investigative Committee decided to institute criminal proceedings. In the early days, it was believed that a plane crash in Rostov could have occurred for several reasons, among which were called incorrect crew actions, technical malfunctions, and weather conditions. The probability of a terrorist attack was ruled out almost immediately, since no traces of explosives were found at the crash site.
Thorough investigation
The investigation was closely watched by relatives of the victims and experts. The very next day, experts examined the scene of the incident and made a diagram of the tragedy. Both black boxes were found in satisfactory condition. Two days after the tragedy, the collection of fragments of the aircraft was completed, and proceeded to lay them out in the hangar.
This work was completed by April 8th. A selection of units was also made to study the performance of all airliner systems. The decoding of the flight recorders and the translation of the crew’s conversations with the dispatchers from English and Spanish into Russian have been completed. However, the experts did not provide a full transcript of the negotiations, citing international rules.
IAC work
According to the IAC, the plane crash in Rostov on March 19, 2016 did not become a consequence of the failure of any aircraft systems or its malfunctions. At the time of departure from the UAE, it was technically sound.
Pilots had the necessary training and all the documents. It was also established that meteorological instruments at the Rostov airport worked properly. Actual weather was in line with forecasts. Also, radio communications worked without interruptions. Therefore, the human factor came to the fore among the causes of the tragedy.
Causes of the disaster
As a result of the investigation, the commission established a fairly accurate chronology of the events of the day when the plane crash in Rostov took place.
During the second attempt to land at an altitude of about 200 meters, the pilots of the liner independently decided to interrupt the maneuver and begin to climb. Apparently, this decision was made due to reports of wind shear near the runway. This is a natural phenomenon that is dangerous for aircraft during landing and take-off.
At an altitude of 580 meters, the ship's commander deflected the helm “towards himself”, thereby causing the nose of the aircraft to rise, which ultimately led to the bow dropping and diving of the airliner.
According to the conclusion of the IAC experts, it was precisely this sequence of actions that led the Boeing to begin to gain altitude and suddenly began to decline sharply. At the same time, he was at an altitude of about 1000 meters above the ground. In the future, all the actions of the crew did not allow to prevent the tragedy, experts believe that a plane crash in Rostov was inevitable.
In this case, the motives of the pilots in the report are not explained in detail. It is only noted that these conclusions are not final, in the future, experts will study the psychological and physical condition of all crew members, especially pilots. Which is especially relevant, given the facts of non-compliance with the airline regime of work and rest of employees.
The preliminary report concludes with recommendations to all airlines to organize additional classes for pilots of civilian liners to study the sequence of actions when leaving for the second round in various weather conditions. The final report of the commission has not yet been prepared.