Why Planes Crash Case Files: 2002: Why Planes Crash, #2

Introduction

WHY PLANES CRASH: Case Files 2002 is the second in my series on modern aviation accidents and incidents around the world. I find it fascinating to focus on the 21st century, a time when most planes don’t crash. These accidents are especially interesting because they offer us a detailed view into complex systems and how humans interact with them. I’ve included well-known accidents from 2002 but also many that aren’t very well known, from different countries and including both commercial and general aviation. My intent is to give the reader a broad cross section of the aviation issues from 2002 and over time, a view of the first decade of this millennium and what it meant for aviation.

It always sounds wrong to hope that the reader will enjoy reading about fatal crashes, but I do hope you will find each account interesting and educational in its own right.

If you’d like to know when the next book in the series is out, please leave me your email address at http://planecra.sh/notify and I’ll be happy to mail you once it is released.

Note: Links to all references used in this book may be found at http://planecra.sh/2002.

CHAPTER ONE

Disaster at the Air Show

ONE OF THE MOST tragic accidents in recent history is hard to reach concrete conclusions about because there are no published investigation results and no final report to be read. The accident took place at Sknyliv Airport, near Lviv in the Ukraine, in July 2002. Over ten years later, the local community has still not recovered.

The airport is six kilometres (3.7 miles) from Lviv city centre. It is officially known as Lviv Danylo Halytskyi International Airport, named after Daniel Romanovych, King of Galicia and Volhynia from 1253 to 1264.

When the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991, a large number of military aircraft were left on Ukrainian territory and taken over by the Ukrainian air force. Most of the aircraft in the air force are still Soviet made and the majority are not considered airworthy. In 2014, the Ministry of Defence stated that they held 507 combat planes and 121 attack helicopters but only 15% were serviceable. The Air Force is grouped into the 5th and 14th Aviation Corps, the 35th Aviation Group and a training aviation command. 2002 was celebrated as the 60th anniversary of the Ukrainian Air Force’s 14th Air Corp which was created at the start of the Second World War.

On the 27th of July, the Ukrainian Air Force hosted a grand event to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the Ukrainian Air Force’s 14th Air Corp. It was a beautiful summer day and over 8,000 people attended to watch the best pilots in Ukraine put on a display: the Ukrainian Falcons.

The Ukrainian Falcons are Ukraine’s aerobatic demonstration team, established in 1995. The pilots are the elite of the Ukrainian Air Force’s fighter pilots and were to show off their skills on the Sukhoi Su-27.

Ukrainian Sukhoi Su-27UB taken 2011 (Photo by Oleg Belyakov)

The Russian twin-engine super-manoeuvrable fighter aircraft entered service in the Soviet Air Force in 1985. The two-seater Su-27 is an amazing long-range fighter aircraft and is still a favourite at air shows around the world.

The Su-27 belongs to the same class [as] the US F-14 and F-15, but unlike the American fighters it can fly at an angle of attack of 30 degrees and can also perform the Pugachev Cobra, an aerobatic maneuver in which the aircraft pitches the nose beyond the vertical at a rate of 70 degrees per second and after that recovers to level flight. Thanks to this maneuver, the Flanker has been the highlight of every air shows [sic] from the end of the 80s to the middle of the 90s.

—From the Aviationist

However, at the Sknyliv Air Show, something went terribly wrong.

Up until that day, the air-show tragedy at Ramstein U.S. Air Force base in Germany in 1988 was considered the worst ever air show disaster, when 70 people were killed and 400 were injured after two Italian military jets collided in midair and crashed into the crowds. Since then, air shows around the world have separated crowds from the flights during aerobatic displays. As a comparison, in the UK, the minimum lateral distance between the aerobatic display line and the crowd line is based on the speed of the aircraft. There must always be at least 100 metres (328 feet) separation and, if the aircraft is flying over 300 knots indicated airspeed, the minimum distance increases to 230 metres (750 feet). Aerobatic pilots must plan their flying sequence, so that they can regain the display line without ever infringing on the separation-from-crowd area, and may not overfly the spectator enclosures or the car park.

Lt Col Vladimir Toponar and his co-pilot Yuriy Yegorov flew the two-seater Sukhoi Su-27UB fighter jet in tandem with a similar aircraft. State officials claimed that the stunt was flawed from the start, but on what basis is unclear. In fact, it is hard to understand exactly what happened that day.

There is no official English transcript of the radio transmissions that day at the airfield. The following has been translated from the Russian transcript by Anatoly Belilovsky and rendered to standard aviation terms by me. Any errors in the following text are mine.

The radio information refers to the people on the ground by name, which appears to me to include high-level military giving air traffic services and commands. I have referred to the people on the ground as control for this transcript. At 12:40, the discussion between the pilots and the control seemed to consist of normal exchanges.

Control: 2,000 metres, thin haze, light cumulus Grade 2 or 3. Weather is clear, 10 km visibility.

Co-Pilot: There’s the weather.

Pilot: Take control for now.

Co-Pilot: Got it.

Pilot: Right turn.

Co-Pilot: Roger.

However, at 12:43 as they began their performance, the responses by the pilots made it clear that something was not right.

Pilot: Where are the spectators? [expletive]!

Co-Pilot: I don’t know where they are, [expletive]!

Pilot: There, I see them!

Co-Pilot: [expletive]! Not on the right!

Pilot to Control: Executing left turn.

Co-Pilot: Should we go?

Control: Turn left, turn left!

The pilots continued their manoeuvres under stress although they were both quite clearly not happy with where the crowd line was in relation to their routine. No official information has been released regarding the official display line and its separation from the crowd line.

It is, however, clear that the required separation was not there from the beginning. The spectators were lined up along both sides of the airfield, limiting options for evasive action by the pilots.

A commercial pilot who worked at the airfield later told the Ukrainian Weekly that the air show was moved from the field’s opposite end at the last minute. He also claimed that another pilot who was supposed to perform that day opted out, citing inadequate preparation.

The air show was dangerous.

The pilots infringed on whatever separation had been planned between crowd and display (if any) from the start. An aerobatic pilot viewing a video of the aircraft said that it looked as though the manoeuvre was planned to be parallel to the crowd line but instead was performed heading towards the spectators.

Nevertheless, the show went on. And at 12:45, less than a minute later, it went wrong.

Control: Turn.

Co-Pilot: Turn out [expletive]!!!!

The SU-27 came out of a roll while the aircraft was still descending at high speed.

Control: Take the plane out of the manoeuvre!

Control (another voice): Take plane out of manoeuvre, add revs!

Control (first voice): Full power.

Cockpit warning: Angle of attack critical.

Cockpit warning: Experiencing hypercritical G-loads.

Control (second voice): Full power!

As the flight crew desperately attempted to climb, the left wing dropped and clipped a tree.

12:45: 18 Cockpit recording ends.

The aircraft hit the ground and skidded towards the apron. It struck an Il-76 transport aircraft and then cartwheeled into the crowd as the fuel exploded into a giant fireball. Sharp fragments and burning jet fuel sprayed into the crowd.

Veteran pilot Serhii Senyk remembered watching through a video camera as the Su-27 surged low above the spectators, rattling their eardrums and bodies. The plane looped into the air and prepared for another descent when it clipped its wing against a birch tree on the horizon.

I knew that was it, Mr. Senyk said. I dropped my camera and my first thought was my wife and son. In the next seconds, the careening plane cartwheeled and clipped four rows of barbed wire fence, dragging them across the field of spectators like a human mower before exploding into flames.

This was covered with human meat, Mr. Senyk said, staring at the wide concrete road on the Sknyliv airfield. It was hell. He ran to where he left his wife and child, only to see they were gone. He left the Sknyliv airfield that day with his two surviving sons.

—From the Ukrainian Weekly

Volume 75 No. 31–5 August 2007

Although the news reports at the time said that the pilots ejected early, investigators discovered that they actually ejected one second after the aircraft impacted. Amazingly, they survived. Seventy-seven bystanders, there to spend a summer day watching the air force show off, did not.

A further 543 were injured, with a hundred needing hospitalisation for injuries and burns. Twenty-seven children died in the collision. Thirteen children lost at least one parent, while three children lost both.

Yuri Motuziuk, was left an orphan, alive and alone on the airport tarmac, covered in ash and soot and crying after the debris and the jet fuel fireball killed his parents, an image carried by television around the world. Petro Mykhailiv lost his son, Andrii, 32, his stepdaughter, Natalia, 31, and two granddaughters, Andrianna and Natalya, aged 6 and 8. The elder Mykhailiv had a heart attack at the morgue while identifying their remains. Bohdan Onyshchak lost his 11-month-old granddaughter, Yaryna, her father, 25 year-old Oleh and another son, Yurii, 23.

—From the Ukrainian Weekly, August 4, 2002, No. 31, Vol. LXX

Two days after the accident, the Prosecutor-General stated that the pilots had used an illegal flight path and that Ukraine’s air force commander had been relieved of duty and detained along with two other officers involved in the planning, calling it an issue of military negligence.

There were many incidents when criminal negligence came into play, when several heads of Ukraine’s air force acted criminally. . . .  We believe that the pilots were given the wrong task with violations of safety procedure.

But he went on to blame the pilots, noting signs of criminal offence.

They used this vehicle incorrectly, he said, adding they could either be detained or put under house arrest pending the outcome of the investigation.

—From BBC News report

29 July 2002

The Ukrainian president spoke out against the air show, saying, How is it possible to understand when the army, working with insufficient funds, completing difficult work for our countrymen, spends its money not on raising the defence capability of the state, but on an entertainment show? I want to note that the guilty must be punished. And just those, those with direct and full responsibility for the tragedy. Not the second-class, little men.

The secretary of National Security and Defence Council was asked to head a special investigative commission to determine the causes of the crash. At the announcement of his appointment, he told reporters that he would examine at least seven possible scenarios to determine whether pilot error or technical problems had caused the crash and that all possibilities that could exist were still under consideration, including terrorism. In the same interview, he then said, There were several things the pilots should have done, according to procedures, which they did not. He expected to have a conclusion within two months.

The investigators announced almost immediately that the issue was that the