The Bet That Killed 70 People | Aeroflot Flight 6502

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TU134 Image : Eduard Marmet - http://www.airliners.net/photo/Aerofl...
This is the story of aeroflot flight 6502. On the 20th of october 1986 a tupolev tu 136 was flying from koltsovo airport to grozny airport with a stopover in kuromoch airport in samara . The domestic flight had 87 passengers and 7 crew members on board. The flight from Koltsovo to kurumoch was normal, nothing out of the ordinary. The plane was fine and the weather was good. Nothing to suggest that this flight would end in tragedy. As they got closer to kurumoch airport the controller asked the pilots to fly an NDB approach to the runway. Here's the thing though, the NDB appraoch is a challenging one when compared to something like an ILS approach. In an ILS approach the instruments will tell you exactly where you are in relation to the correct glidepath. Are you too high or too low, are you to the left or the right of the runway? All that information is right there for your taking . But in an NDB approach you only get lateral guidance and theres no one single instrument that will give you all the information you need. You need to use the automatic direction finder to tune the NDB beacon and things like that, the point is an NDB approach isn't the easiest approach out there. If pilots had to chose theyd probably go with an ILS approach 10/10 times.

At 3:51 pm the pilots began their descent into kurumoch. Apparently throughout the flight the pilots had been talking about visibilities and the captain kept on saying that he could land the plane in zero visibility without the autopilot. at that point the captain of the plane had an insanely stupid idea and when i mean insanely stupid I mean insanely stupid. Why argue when you could actually do it. The captain turns to the first officer and goes “ You know what I bet i could land this plane in zero visibility”, incredibly the first officer takes him up on his bet. Their little conversation had turned into a full on bet. The captain asked his flight engineer to draw the blinds across the cockpit windows. He was going to do it. He was going to land this plane without looking out the window by just using his instruments. Now in modern airplanes this can be done if you have the right equipment on the ground and if the pilots are trained to do so. But these guys werent in that positon, they nor their plane was in a position to land in zero visibility. But the captain pressed on with the landing, the TU 134 descended as the pilots flew in blind. The jet sped by at about 160 knots and before long they were at the decision height. At this point if you dont have the runway in sight you should go around. You should gain some altitude and you should try again, but the captain continued the approach.

None of the other pilots objected, this probably started out as a joke but it had gone far enough, still no one spoke up. As the plane lost altitude the ground proximity warning came on letting the pilots know that they were way too low. They needed to go around but they didnt. The captain at this point was struggling to keep the plane on the correct glidepath. He pulled back power on the engines in an attempt to prevent the plane from overshooting the runway.

The plane was over the runway right now the captain asked the flight engineer to pull the curtains back. As light flooded into the cockpit the pilots struggled to adapt to visual flying. When they finally did get their bearings, they were in for the shock of their lives, they were almost out of runway . One second after opening the curtains flight 6502 touched down about 132 meters or 400 feet from the end of the runway. The touchdown was so hard that it damaged the plane's very structure. Right before touchdown the data showed that the pilots tried to pull the plane out of its descent but it was too little too late. As the plane went along the runway fuel from the ruptured tanks caught fire. As the plane ran out of runway the fuselage flipped over and the wreck of flight 6502 continued on for 528 meters or 1700 feet and burst into flames. 70 people did not survive the crash. The captain, first officer and flight engineer survived the crash. But the first officer died of smoke inhalation when trying to help the survivors of flight 6502.