Aeroflot
Tragic plane crash: How 70 people died once – because of an arrogant bet in the cockpit
In October 1986, Captain Alexander Klyuyev took off from Yekaterinburg to Grozny in Russia – with 87 passengers and 7 crew members on board an Aeroflot aircraft (image of an aircraft of the same type)
© Edward Marmet / Wikimedia
35 years ago, dozens of passengers were killed in an Aeroflot plane crash after the pilot bet he could land the plane blind. In the meantime, the details of the disaster have become public knowledge.
The horrifying events of a plane crash in Russia in 1986 were kept under wraps for years by the KGB – the former Soviet intelligence service. For some time, however, they have been freely accessible and allow an insight into the details of an avoidable tragedy, which are both shocking and simply characterized by stupidity and arrogance.
Aeroflot Flight 6502: Fatal crash landing of a Tupolev 134A
In October 1986, Captain Alexander Klyuyev took off from Yekaterinburg to Grozny in Russia – with 87 passengers and 7 crew members on board an Aeroflot aircraft. The plane, a seven-year-old Tupolev 134A narrow-body aircraft with serial number 62327, was flying somewhere over the Ural Mountains when, just before landing, Captain Kliuyev made a bet with First Officer Gennady Zhirnov that he could land the plane blind – meaning he only had the instruments of the aircraft – to bring it to a halt, as Britain’s The Sun summed up the events.
Kliuyev felt so safe that he ordered the curtains drawn over the cockpit windshield to completely block his view while he was about 400 meters above the ground.
He soon flew too low, but ignored any alarm signals from the ground proximity system and disregarded the instructions of air traffic control. After the captain misjudged both the speed and the current flight altitude, the inevitable happened: The machine of flight Aeroflot 6502 hit the ground at a much too high speed of approx. 280 km/h and it was also so far back on the runway that the plane could no longer be braked. Only 254 meters later and well behind the runway, the plane came to a standstill and finally caught fire lying on its back.
70 dead in Aeroflot flight 6502 crash – the perpetrator survived
Of the 94 passengers and crew on board, 63 people died directly during the crash. Seven others later died in hospital as a result. Miraculously, all 14 children on board survived. First officer Zhirnov – the one who made the bet – also died of cardiac arrest on the way to the hospital, as summarized by the portal Simpleflying.com.
Captain Kliuyev was tried for the crash the following year and sentenced to fifteen years in prison. The court ruled that the crash was avoidable, concluding that the people died only because of Kliuyev’s arrogance. The sentence was later reduced – for unknown reasons – and Kliuyev served only six years of imprisonment.
Swell: “sun”, Simpleflying.com