Tragedy Strikes For The Russian Ice Hockey Team | Mayday | On The Move

a russian passenger jet crashes into the volga river rescuers are stunned to discover that the plane was carrying some of the country's most famous athletes the yaroslav locomotive hockey team is decimated nearly the entire team is dead how can that happen to a team of such young talented healthy guys that had so much to offer the president of russia demands answers the russian government was put in pressure and the investigators trying to get results why didn't they lift off investigators need to know why the jets struggle to get off the ground that can be the moment the split second when you might have chosen life versus death look what happened here the reason is almost too simple to believe what are you doing september the 7th 2011 a yak 42 jet descends towards a russian airport on its way to pick up some very important passengers they were reliable soviet built airplanes that could land on shorter runways and extend that airline service to smaller airports this charter flight is operated by yak service airlines only the crew is on board first officer igor javierlov is the airline's vice president of flight operations in his nearly 30 years of flying he's racked up more than thirteen thousand hours in the air lobster beside him is captain andre solomon sieve one of his closest friends get down flight engineer vladimir matushen rounds out the three-man cockpit crew get down three green mechanic alexander sizov flies with the plane to make sure it's in good working order at all times it's important to get people from a to b with obviously safe operation and good service in the charter world maybe more so because this is the reputation of the company will they call us again the plane is just moments from landing in yaroslavl a city 250 kilometers northeast of moscow touchdown into euros level it was a little bit rough touchdown bounce landing followed wow a little heavy there i must be nervous the president may be watching yaroslavl's airport is under tight security some of russia's top politicians are attending an economic forum in town but it's not politicians who are preparing to board the plane it is another prestigious group of passengers the yaroslavl locomotive hockey team one of the most beloved sports teams in all of russia [Applause] their fans were fantastic they were loud in support of their team and they let you know when you were the opposing team mike fountain is a former national hockey league goalie who has played against lokomotiv in russia it created quite the atmosphere whenever you went to that city it was it's a hockey town they loved it hockey is a religion in russia people love haki people love hockey players they're celebrities they're stars alexander galimov is a right winger who has played for locomotive his entire career born in yaroslavl he's a local hero hey coach this guy's like me on the ford check canadian brad mccrimmon was an all-star nhl defense man and assistant coach now at age 52 he's looking forward to his first regular season game as a head coach in russia for a coach like brad mccrimmon with his record being an assistant coach with the red wings and his playing career for him to go over to a team like euroslav with the passion those fans have i guarantee you he was so excited to have that opportunity to go and win that first game some of russia's best players are on this team including team captain ivan kachenko i had the opportunity to play against ivan tachenko for many years he's a fantastic hockey player and he was one of those guys that was always in front of you in the game always getting an opportunity to score in the preseason locomotive has been on a hot streak winning seven of nine pre-season games fans believe this year they have a very good shot at winning the gagarin cup they want you to win the championship that cup it's a big deal hungry this year we win it all really yeah as a vp with the airline first officer gevielov has managed to pull rank in order to fly with some of his heroes for this flight captain solomonsiev will take the controls while javierlove handles the radio calls the call signed to notion the crew starts the yak's three engines start number three and adjusts the plane stabilizer for takeoff how much for you nine maybe i think eight and a half laps and slots in position the flight is bound for minsk two hours away in belarus for the players it's the first of many flights they will have to make this season the hockey players are the same over in russia as north america we've got the jokesters on the team you've got the guys that will maybe sit in the corner be a little more quiet you've got the guys that maybe went out a little too much the night before and has a story for you and it's kind of funny how that is an international thing checking the blade controls start complete thrust set on september the 7th 2011 just before four in the afternoon the plane starts down the runway crew are taking off v1 is 190. the flight engineer watches the gauges it's his job to advise the captain when the plane reaches takeoff speed the engine power should determine just how fast you get and if it's done properly and the flaps and slots are set right you will have the right right lift generated by the speed to get you off the ground safely as almost always happens rotate the flight engineer called rotate and the captain displaced the yoke to rotate the elevators up to about 10 degrees this would have been sufficient for creating that take-off attitude and the airplane lifting off but the plane stays on the ground nothing happened their airplane did not react in any way to the displacement of the yoke 210 football the captain calls for full power and again nothing happens to the aircraft some of the passengers sense trouble planes in russia are not up to european and north american standards and it's a it's a little bit a little bit scary for north american and european players going over there the runway is 3000 meters long the crew must lift off before the 2600 meter mark or they won't be able to stop safely probably set stabilizer too low what's up adjusting the stabilizer doesn't help what's happening you'll be fine the plane has enough speed and should get airborne 220. but instead of lifting off the yak 42 keeps going past the end of the runway going off the runway the end of our takeoff roll is always dangerous full tank of gas people are still confused you don't know how far the clear spacing goes this is a nightmare for every pilot because now the airplane is not flying and yet you're moving across the ground at 142 miles an hour what we're doing the crew struggles desperately to get the plane off the ground finally they succeed the plane is airborne but not out of trouble yak service flight 9633 isn't able to climb the pilots have lost control the yak 42 crashes into the volga river less than a kilometer from the end of the runway local police patrolling the river are the first to reach the wreck star player alexander galimov has survived the crash no it's okay i'll be honest mechanic alexander seizov is also alive please rescuers are shocked to learn the plane was carrying some of russia's most famous athletes thank you twisted wreckage burns near the river's edge witnesses record the horrific scene minutes after impact onlookers see no sign of more survivors through the thick black smoke dimitri pushkov is a hospital pathologist who rushes to the scene when we arrived at the crash site the ground was burned small pieces of wreckage and clothing fragments were everywhere and in the middle of the field the bodies of the dead hockey players were stacked the smell of kerosene was very strong it tastes sweet i'll remember it forever within hours russian investigators are also at the scene they must figure out what caused this accident excuse me we'll be taking charge here now james oberg is an aviation consultant and former nasa engineer the investigation team had had a lot of experience sadly because there have been many accidents but that experience as it turned out turned out to be critical to actually finding the cause of this particular accident their first challenge is to secure the site get these people out of here news of the tragedy spread through the city and fans as well as regular people wanted to see few could believe it so they wanted to see what happened and say goodbye to the hockey players of the 45 people who boarded the flight 43 are dead including the pilots the locomotive hockey team has been all but wiped out [Music] this was a tragedy for everyone in yaroslavl lots of people knew these guys not just as hockey players but personally that's why everybody took this loss very hard [Music] hungry alexander galimov and the mechanic alexander sizov are the only two survivors they are both put into medically induced comas i knew that once i checked the players list i knew i would know players on that team and it was it was it was a tough feeling around the world there's shock of the news this is one of the biggest tragedies in the history of sport i think that the reaction across the world was first of shock disbelief you know how can that happen to a team of such young talented healthy good family guys that had so much to offer in moscow fans are stunned when a grim announcement interrupts the continental hockey league season opening game the president of the khl actually stopped a game that was in progress after he heard about the accident which was a very touching move more than 20 people saw the plane's failed takeoff attempt so what happened because the team is so well loved everyone wants answers investigators focus in on a key question why couldn't the yak-42 lift off the runway three factors are essential for takeoff first is engine power you need enough thrust to reach takeoff speed second is lift the wing flaps must be properly extended to increase aerodynamic lift and finally to achieve the proper angle the plane's horizontal stabilizer must be angled putting downward force on the tail and lifting the nose the investigators examined the wreckage looking for anything that might reveal if the plane was not properly configured for takeoff well looks like flaps were set at 20. on your way down the runway if your flaps and slats aren't set properly you may get too much drag it's it's a sweet spot of those settings and they have to be in that region if they are beyond that region they will not do what you want in fact they'll do things you don't want the flaps on the wings seem to be correctly extended for takeoff on the tail the horizontal stabilizer also appears to be properly deflected it looks fine everything appeared to be normal in terms of the lift investigators find nothing to suggest the engines weren't providing enough thrust to get the plane off the ground you would look at the settings of the engines the quality of the jet fuel and those are the things you would look at first and they did look at them first confirmation of the engine performance can only come from the plane's flight data recorder it's one of two black boxes that record every detail of the flight they may hold the key to understanding exactly what happened but they've been submerged in the volga river before they can be analyzed they must be slowly and carefully dried out okay take them to moscow immediately why the pilots of flight 9633 could not lift off the runway remains a mystery there's a second equally puzzling question why didn't they abort the takeoff at the first hint of trouble the question then is what decisions should the crew have made when would they have known enough to choose to abort the takeoff meanwhile a day after one of his nation's worst tragedies russian president dmitry medvedev visits the crash site it was high profile because obviously very famous club and any loss of life is tragic in aviation especially and and as i mentioned before hockey is is a main sport in russia if you will if you talk to russian people they would tell you we lost we lost part of a family 2011 has been a dismal year for russian aviation the yaris level accident is the eighth fatal crash so far less than three months earlier 47 people died near an airport 650 kilometers north of moscow russ air flight 9605 slammed into a highway while coming in for a landing late at night the yaris level disaster has drawn critical attention from around the world president medvedev announces that radical changes are needed in russian aviation the pressure on a team to investigate this and find the correct answer to it is always high but when the president of the country comes out and says you're going to do it right because the country needs an answer i'm sure they felt the whole weight of their whole country and the families of all the victims looming over them we need to work faster investigators desperately need to know what happened during the final moments of flight 9633 they catch a break when they learn that an airport security camera off the end of the runway recorded the yak-42 as it finally lifted off the grainy image could provide a crucial lead whoa can you play that again the video shows that the plane was properly configured for takeoff but beyond that it holds no new information no clue to what went wrong okay they started here they lifted off here the plane only needed 1200 meters to get off the ground they had about 2 800 plus meters of runway available that's more than twice the distance they should need something kept the plane on the ground when it should have lifted off the persistent question for investigators is what they think the plane might simply have been too heavy aside from being hard to get in the air if you weigh more anything that weighs more is going to be harder to accelerate it's a lesson that was learned nearly nine years earlier in charlotte north carolina all 21 people aboard a commuter plane die when it crashed and burst into flames less than a minute after takeoff the plane was 263 kilograms above the allowed maximum weight was also considered a key factor in the us army's deadliest peacetime crash on arrow air flight 1285 the weight of 248 soldiers equipped with heavy gear was underestimated their dc-8 fell from the sky 900 meters beyond the end of the runway in gander newfoundland everyone on board was killed if the weight is underestimated or not calculated at all you don't you just don't have that clear picture of what exactly to expect from the airplane they didn't know their weight concerns over the takeoff weight increase when investigators learned that yak service had no scales for weighing baggage at yaris levels airport there was no way to weigh the gear the luggage and the cargo that would be loaded in the airplane so it was estimated but when investigators estimate the weight of the team and their baggage they conclude that the plane was not too heavy the weight is under the limit even with all the hockey gear the plane was still safely under its maximum weight it does not appear that was a contributing issue on this in this case but it shows that the crew was not properly preparing the information they would need during the takeoff role if the problem wasn't weight it may have been speed investigators returned to the engines using the plane's estimated weight they determined that the speed needed for takeoff was 215 kilometers an hour didn't they ever get to 215. if the engines weren't working properly it could explain the disaster it's very fortunate that the flight data recorders were both recovered and functional and that isn't a universal factor in modern russian aviation the speed question is resolved when investigators check the fdr data they find that the engines had powered the plane well beyond takeoff speed engines are working investigators are baffled they can find no reason for the failed takeoff and why didn't they lift off the airplane should fly the airplane wants to fly in fact at 210 kilometers per hour with the stabilizers set at seven degrees the yak-42 will rotate on its own [Music] on september the 10th 2011 russian prime minister vladimir putin attends a memorial for the lokomotiv players along with 40 000 grieving fans two days later alexander galimov the last remaining member of one of russia's best hockey teams dies from his injuries [Music] the yaroslavl tragedy has now claimed 44 lives with an entire nation mourning the loss of so many young athletes the air crash investigation team is under intense pressure to deliver answers the russian government was putting pressure on the investigators trying to to get results to get to the truth what exactly was happening investigators scour the flight data recording desperate for clues finally they spot something unusual look at the acceleration despite full power from the engines the yak-42 did not accelerate as quickly as it should during the takeoff roll when the aircraft should be continuously accelerating it was actually slowing down toward the end of the roll and slowing down is a bizarre and unusual and potentially fatal development it could be the lead investigators have been hoping for if they can explain the bizarre drop in acceleration they may finally know what killed the celebrated team and the crew investigators can't figure out what could have caused flight 9633 to lose speed at a critical moment could the brakes be on it's a bizarre possibility but having the brakes on might explain the plane's unusual behavior something was breaking the aircraft at a time when everything else was trying to speed it up to confirm their theory investigators conduct a test at the gromov flight research institute near moscow the length of the runway at gromov is probably around 5000 meters or so it's very long it is suited for test flying a test pilot will recreate the flight exactly using data from the fdr first they try the flight with no brakes applied we have rotation speed the test plane lifts off easily just 1200 meters down the runway then they try the flight again time puts the brake on they gradually applied the wheel brakes to to to slow the aircraft down as you're attempting to take off with the brakes on the plane still has enough power to take off but the distance needed to reach takeoff speed more than doubles what the flight test indicated was that the four sets of brakes in the landing gear were activated and were actively slowing down the aircraft as it's rolling down the runway the test flight evidence is compelling it now seems almost certain that the yak-42 powered down the runway with its brakes on rotate the puzzling question is why a bizarre situation and explaining it was was was a real challenge investigators listened to the cockpit voice recording from flight 9633 okay go ahead they hope the crew's conversation can help explain how and why the plane's brakes were activated during takeoff thanks they hear the crew check the brakes before takeoff the brake test was fine it appears that the crew had no concerns about their brakes at the start of the flight investigators now wonder if the braking system malfunctioned and activated the brakes in error after the plane began to move from the media coverage we know that there were problems with braking system there is definitely a possibility digging into the history of brake malfunction on the yak 42 the investigative team makes a disturbing find there have been at least five previous incidents involving faulty breaks but things went really really south after the collapse of the soviet union and a lot of safety measures and normal training and talented people all went by the wayside to better understand what went wrong with the brakes investigators send the wheel assemblies out for testing [Music] while they wait for results they shift their focus to another unanswered question why they keep trying to get in the air long after in hindsight it was clear they should not have perhaps the cockpit recording will explain the crew's decision to continue their troubled takeoff full power investigators listen for the captain to announce their abort speed also known as v1 once the airplane approaches the v1 speed the captain of the aircraft needs to make a decision to either continue to take off or abort take off but as they approach the critical speed if you are taking off v1 is 190. the recording reveals a disturbing exchange we need two hundred for v1 no vr is 200. we hear the captain announcing 190 kilometers per hour as a v1 speed and he is corrected by the flight engineer no air crew should be debating critical speeds during a takeoff run they didn't know their board speed the abort speed should have been determined before the plane even started to move okay let me let me hear the briefing the departure briefing is very important part of the flight it is done and conducted by the captain it has to be recorded on a cockpit voice recorder the push press is a run away hitting 300 transitional altitude is 700 meters a captain typically informs his crew of the proper abort speed in a briefing before takeoff prior to reaching a we will reject the takeoff when he comes down to the v1 speed it's impossible to distinguish what exactly he's saying investigators suspect the crew did not hear a v1 speed either the three men never agreed on the speed at which they could no longer safely abort takeoff if you don't have your pre-planned criteria set up like the v-speed like other factors in the aircraft you don't have the one measurable gate that can tell you at this point that you're good or not good rotate had they rejected takeoff three to five seconds after attempting to rotate they would have still stopped in a clear way and everybody would have just walked away instead they try to troubleshoot the problem the probably set stabilizers too low until they run out of runway calculations show that from the time the pilots first attempted to lift off they had five seconds to decide whether to stop they had time to stop they allowed themselves to get the point where they no longer wanted to abort and would rather have continued on which they did in the cockpit there was a feel that the airplane is going to get airborne any second now any second we'll a little bit more a little bit more speed a little more speed we're going to lift off investigators conclude that continuing the takeoff was a fatal error by the crew they can only speculate why they did perhaps the pilots felt pressure to get their prestigious passengers to their destination on time the crew of course was trying to do their best and perform this mission take them for their opening game of the season if you have a maintenance delay it doesn't quite look good in your company will they call you again i don't know maybe not meanwhile results from the brake system analysis are in there's no evidence of mechanical failure the brakes were fine they calculated that having them actually fail independently accidentally altogether the odds were literally a billion to one which will never happen the finding moves the investigation closer to a disturbing conclusion one of the pilots must have applied the brakes himself we need to take a closer look at the crew investigators know that if they announced the crew was at fault the public will question their motives there is a very common cultural threat in russia of blaming the people present for something that goes wrong it helps to insulate those who put them there or those decisions put them there keeps them blameless few are willing to believe that one of the two experienced pilots could have accidentally had his foot on the brakes during takeoff many eyebrows got raised within the russian airline industry we know that the first officer was very distinguished pilot and he had almost 13 000 hours as a first officer and a captain but a review of the crew's flight records offers up a clue both pilots routinely trained on and flew two different versions of the yak plane the yak-40 is a much older regional jet introduced in 1968 it carries up to 32 passengers the larger yak-42 made its first flight in 1980 with a swept wing design and more powerful turbofan engines it can carry three times as many passengers and fly longer routes both pilots were more experienced on the yak-40 jet but they also flew the yak-42 depending on which was available at most airlines pilots are not allowed to switch from one type of plane to another it is improper and incorrect to train a pilot to fly two airplanes at the same time it's beginning to look like the crew's habit of flying two different but similar planes may have led to confusion in the cockpit focusing in on the brake pedals investigators spot a small but potentially significant difference i want to see those pedals the yak-40 brake pedal cups the pilot's entire foot but the yak-42 is designed so the pilot's heel rests on the floor they are flying back and forth these two different kinds of aircraft which happen to have different ways of putting your their feet on the brake pedal and that was when the aha started to appear a pilot accustomed to flying the yak-40 might have placed his whole foot on the pedal a mistake that could have activated the brakes if you arrest your feet on the yak 42 pedals just like you would in the yak-40 it is possible to create a pressure on the top part of the pedal and activate the wheel brakes it is possible while such an error could in theory account for the accident investigators still have questions they can't understand why a pilot wouldn't notice his mistake right away you don't have to put about 10 15 20 pounds of pressure onto the pedals and that that is significant weight you would think a person would feel that it's not until they examine the crew's medical records that a possible explanation emerges first officer igor javielov had secretly been treated for a nerve condition he should not have been certified to fly the first officer had a neurological condition where the extremities sort of lose sensitivity he was losing the sensations in his legs it was a medical development it was a slow development it didn't make him fall down but it made him less aware of feedback from feelings in his feet so the argument was made that the first officer could have been pressing on the brake pedals without even realizing it look look what happened here it seems that the brakes affected the plane's flight in more than one way the brakes didn't just slow the plane down they also kept the nose from lifting up it's going to pitch you down because you are being pushed by engines that are above the brakes it's going to give the aircraft a nose down pitch engaging brakes on a rotating wheel creates a downward force on the nose it acted on the yak-42 almost like glue sticking the plane to the runway you probably said stabilizer too low the crew's attempts to get the nose up only made matters worse once they were off the ground at that point the braking force of contact of the tires with the runway now stops and all the other forces that you've been putting into the aircraft pulling back on the oak elevator trim flaps just to get the nose up they are now no longer counteracted by the nose down force of the braking the aircraft immediately goes into it a nose up a high pitch rate 20 degrees up in about two seconds and you can't stay in the air the sudden nose-up attitude causes the wings to quickly lose lift drag increases the speed drops the plane goes into a stall and you're just a big hunk of metal and fuel and flesh just falling through the air while digging further into the pilot's records investigators make another astonishing discovery oh whoa so he didn't complete the training in the training reports of the two pilots it was discovered that in many cases they've been certified as having accomplished certain flight tasks and flight challenges such as poor visibility bad weather flying when they hadn't when the captain went through training then it was sort of put on hold and then went through training again and then switched employers but the training was done inconsistently with with breaks in between some of the training documentation for the first officer was not even available how much were you nine maybe eight i think the crew while highly experienced lacked the correct training to fly the yak-42 the federal air transport agency immediately suspends the operating license of yak service airlines the fleet was grounded and yak service as a company was closed it was the people who had set up that disaster by not properly training them by not properly assigning them and by all series of regulatory failures and procedural failures that set up this accident there is one final revelation which helps investigators understand the precise steps involved in this accident data from the flight recorders shows the crew made another critical error just seconds before impact one which ultimately doomed everyone on board investigators are puzzled by something that was said in the cockpit just seconds before the crash the flight data shows that there was a momentary drop in engine thrust accompanied by a brief deflection in the elevators when they synchronize the data with the cockpit recording a tragic picture emerges after rolling off the runway the captain moves his controls to abort the takeoff the flight engineer follows his lead and decreases engine power the flight engineer thinks they have aborted the argument aboard he sees a clue from the action of the pilot on the yoke and puts the engine to neutral actually powers down the engines what are you doing but the first officer disagrees and the captain reverses his decision he orders the engineer to put the engines back at full power and tries to take off running a safe cockpit requires there to be a distinct chain of command and the captain is in charge but the problem with yak services was that the first officer was actually bureaucratically his boss because he was the director of flight services it was their last chance even the momentary hesitation as to who's in charge and whose word goes that in a case like this can be the moment the split second when you might have chosen life versus death only two months after the crash investigators release an initial report outlining the causes the pilot's inadvertent breaking is listed as a main cause of the crash but the real blame as the accident investigation came to conclusion properly in my mind was that the people who put the crew in that position were the ones to blame the charter airline yak service is also severely criticized the crew was doing things that you could have predicted in advance they would have done and they were not doing things you could have predicted they wouldn't have done because of the nature of the crew training their background their experience everything that you can expect pilot to do under those conditions sole survivor of the crash mechanic alexander sisov requires ongoing treatment he no longer flies after suffering one of the worst tragedies ever in the history of sport yaroslavl locomotive cancels their entire 2011 season the beauty of the russian hockey system i would say is that they do have a great feeder program with those younger kids coming up they have a team called euro slab 2 that is the the next generation that would be ready to make the step the next year the team made a triumphant return once again the city of yarislavel has hopes of winning the cup the locomotive fans would also come to understand the true character of their late team captain ivan kochenko for years ivan had been anonymously donating millions of rubles to seriously ill children only minutes before takeoff kachenko made his last donation to a 16 year old girl in hospital a girl he had never met for some there's hope that the yaris level disaster will lead to safer air travel in russia through my years of playing there plane crashes were just oh mike it's it's it's russia that was the attitude of the players i played with in the organization it's just russia and hopefully unfortunately a tragedy like this can hopefully maybe wake some people up there is a push from the government to clean up the industry from the small operators that are not quite being controlled if you will or inspected properly on a regular basis the crash of flight 9633 shown a harsh spotlight on commercial aviation in russia many in the industry believe that what's required now is a strong effort to maintain a culture of safety throughout the nation's aviation industry there's hope we can establish control but it requires constant vigilance that's not something that procedures can fix only a cultural change can fix it and getting it getting that cultural change is devilishly difficult but if you don't do it then you pay you pay a devil's ransom [Music] you

Channel: On The Move

Views: 478,710

Keywords: on the move, cars, planes, trains, documentary, documentaries, full length documentaries, plane documentary, mayday series, mayday, plane disasters, airport, runway, plane pilot, pilot, hd documentary, 2021 documentary, united airlines, plane crash, air accident, air crash, air disaster, plane accident, air emergency, plane disaster, plane emergency, russia, ice hockey, russian ice hockey team, russia ice hockey, 2011

Id: C99liltaF9E

Length: 45min 3sec (2703 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 08 2021