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The mountains are open to disaster
The worst air disaster in Russia in terms of casualties in 2024 could have been caused by the crew of the Mi-8 Vityaz, according to a preliminary report published on Tuesday by the Interstate Aviation Commission (IAC). - Helicopter. Amid low clouds and thick fog that enveloped the mountains, the plane with 22 people on board crashed on a slope in Kamchatka. The plane's captain was training on a simulator but did not have access to instrument flight, and the second pilot was only able to fly this year.
The Mi-8, leased by Vityaz-Aero to transport tourists, crashed on August 31, 2024. 22 people died, including the pilot and flight engineer.
The helicopter was flying along the Nikolaevka-Vachkazhets-Nikolaevka route. The crew landed twice in the area of the Vachkazhets volcano crater. During the second landing, 12 passengers remained on board, and their places were taken by a group of 19 people who had returned from their trip. After that, the crew started the engines and flew to Nikolaevka, gaining an altitude of about 1,500 m. During the flight, radio contact was maintained with the Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky (Elizovo) airfield dispatcher.
At 16:04 local time, when the technical inspection was completed, the helicopter commander asked the dispatcher about the weather in the area of the landing site "Nikolaevka-2" and said that he would be there in 5 minutes. Then the plane disappeared, and the crew did not answer the calls.
The helicopter wreckage was found the following day on a mountainside 976 meters above sea level. None of the passengers survived.
The crashed helicopter was manufactured in 1992 and received a certificate of airworthiness until February 2028. According to the IAC, at the time of the crash, the Mi-8 itself, its units and systems had sufficient resources to perform the flight mission. The vehicle was not overloaded and held 630 liters of fuel, the quality of which experts recognized as satisfactory.
The flight took place in rather difficult weather conditions. At an altitude of 180-240 m there was solid cloud cover, the mountains and passes were covered with clouds, precipitation and fog.
The helicopter did not have a ground proximity early warning system.
Operational specifications published by the Federal Air Transport Administration on July 28, 2022, required the aircraft to be flown under visual flight rules only.
The aircraft was piloted by a 38-year-old pilot with over 52,000 hours of flight time on the Mi-8. From May 16 to 22, 2024, he completed simulator training to perform instrument landing approaches under the program "Training (training) of the Mi-8, Mi-8TM, Mi-8AMT (Mi-171) flight crew". The expert instructor concluded that the work was fully completed and the flight commander cleared the flight. However, the pilot did not receive clearance for an instrument flight. At the same time, the Mi-8 commander, faced with virtually zero visibility, could not count on the help of his second pilot. He was only 23 years old, he was cleared to fly helicopters only in January 2024, and he had only 297 hours of flight time.
The IAC did not make a final conclusion about the cause of the disaster, but provided a complete list of violations by Vityaz-Aero Airlines that led to similar incidents.
Thus, in April 2015, a Mi-8 crashed into a snowy part of a mountain because the crew failed to maintain a safe flight altitude and did not return to an alternate airfield when adverse weather conditions arose. The all-terrain vehicle and the loaded vehicle had their cabins and tail booms smashed, resulting in six people being injured.
In December of the same year, the company lost another Mi-8T, which crashed after the crew lost spatial orientation during a flight in a snowstorm. One person died.
And the Mi-8 crash on August 12, 2021, which occurred due to the failure of the aircraft commander to make a timely decision to fly to an alternate airfield in weather conditions that did not correspond to the level of training of the crew, had the following consequences: the Mi-8T fell into Kuril Lake. 8 people died.
Last Monday, Rosaviatsia revoked Vityaz-Aero's commercial air transport certificate due to numerous violations.
In addition, the Company's Certificate of Aviation Practice and General Aviation Operator Certificate will be cancelled and will not be reinstated (see page 9 for details).
Meanwhile, the IAC, together with the flight crews of other operators operating helicopters in mountainous and wooded areas, recommended conducting training sessions on weather analysis and the procedure for making decisions on the execution of a flight, as well as the behavior of pilots when faced with weather conditions. There are also no procedures for recovering an aircraft from an abnormal angular position using the main flight instruments.