The Bet That Killed 70 People | Aeroflot Flight 6502

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.   The crash was so horrific that the authorities  tried to prevent pictures of the crash from   getting out. But someone did leak the images out  to the public. You can see them on screen right   now. With this crash there isnt much to analyze,  no long chain of events that caused the crash.   No multiple failures that line up just  right to cause a crash. Just one person   that made a really bad decision. But why would someone even try something   this stupid in the first place? I think it came  down to normalcy. That flight and presumably the   ones before it were normal, nothing went wrong  with them and so the pilots probably got this   feeling that nothing bad would happen to them.  They probably thought that things would just work   out in the end for them as it always did. This false sense of safety played right into   the captain's overconfidence bias. You see  overconfidence bias mainly in the corporate world,   where people think they are better at something  than they actually are. But here the captain fits   the bill perfectly. Here he was too confident  in his abilities he was sure that he could   land the plane with no visual cues. Usually  when someone has the overconfidence bias they   tend to do it first and then ask questions  later. In this case that was exactly what   happened. The captain did the studpid thing and he  got multiple warnings in the form of GPWS warnings   and such and he still didnt stop to consider that  he might be flying this plane into the ground.   That realization did not come until a second  before touchdown when the pilot made a sharp   nose up input to avoid touching down hard. Unfortunately people who are suffering from   overconfidence bias never really ask themselves  the question “what is the worst that could   happen?” had someone in the cockpit asked that  question maybe someone would have spoken up.   The really incredible thing was not that the  captain suggested landing the plane blind   but that the other pilots in the  cockpit went along with his insanity.   That suggests that aeroflot had a  fundamental issue with safety at the time,   their safety record from the time backs up  that. 8231 people have died in aeroflot crashes   and that was about 5 times higher than any other  airline at the time. I mean there were so many   crashes at aerfoflot from the 1950s to the 1990s  that wikipedia decided to give each decade its own   dedicated page as there were just too many  accidents to fit on one page. I mean aeroflot   at the time was one of the worlds largest  airlines at the time flying about 60 million   passengers when pan am flew about 11 million.  That size coupled with old unreliable soviet   equipment and pilots who were unprofessional  turned out to be a dangerous combo.   Now on this channel I try my best to give you  an unbiased view of what happened. Usually if   the pilot makes a mistake i try to delve into the  reasons behind that to tell you why they made the   decision that they made. In the case of atlas  air 3591 the pilot was disoriented, in the case   of british airways flight 028 the pilot was sick  and mistakes were made. In the case of raf voyager   333 the captain forgot about his camera. The point  is In all those other accidents I can understand   how they made the mistakes that they did. I can  empathize with them and the state that they were   in. But in this case I just can't. Despite pouring  over this accident for hours and hours I just   can't fathom why a pilot would try to do what the  captain did. It just makes no sense whatsoever.   For his role in the crash the captain was charged  with 15 years in prison but that was later reduced   to 6 years. Its still sad to think that the  reckless actions of one man lead to the deaths   of 70 people. Its almost unbelievable. But if there is one silverlining to this story   is that aeroflot has turned itself around  in the last few decades. Now they fly a much   smaller fleet but theyre highly rated and much  safer. Ahev you flown aerflot of late though.   What do you think of them also Why do you  think he made the deadly bet that he did?   Let me know your thoughts in the comments below.  If you want to watch another mini air crash   investigation video then how about this video on  what wed do after we found the wreck of MH 370.

Channel: Mini Air Crash Investigation

Views: 1,814,733

Keywords: air crash investigation, why planes crash, aviation safety, aeroflot crash, aeroflot flight 6502, how truth or dare killed 70 people, tupolev 134, russia air crash, aeroflot plane crash, russia plane crash, plane crash in russia, theflightchannel, mentour pilot, pilot error, educational, plane documentary, mayday, air crash confidential, air crash, history, documentary, aviation history, history documentary, aviation educational video, avgeek, simple flying, planes aviation

Id: bAJi5EQunQs

Length: 10min 6sec (606 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 24 2022

Reddit Comments

[u/MeWhenAAA]

I saw it yesterday in Mauricio PC

It still bothers me that the captain only served less than half of his sentence.