Aeroflot Flight 6502

Aeroflot Flight 6502 was a Soviet domestic passenger flight operated by a Tupolev Tu-134A from Sverdlovsk (now Yekaterinburg) to Grozny via Kuibyshev (now Samara), which crashed in Kuibyshev on 20 October 1986. 70 of the 94 passengers and crew on board were killed when the plane overran the runway, after the pilot attempted to make an instrument-only approach with curtained cockpit windows. Investigators determined the cause of the accident was pilot negligence.

Background

The crew of the Tu-134A aircraft, serial number 62327 manufactured on 28 June 1979, consisted of pilot in command Alexander Kliuyev, co-pilot Gennady Zhirnov, navigating officer Ivan Mokhonko, flight engineer Kyuri Khamzatov, and three flight attendants. Having departed from Koltsovo Airport in Yekaterinburg (then Sverdlovsk) and bound for Grozny, Flight 6502 had one stopover at Kurumoch Airport in Samara (then Kuibyshev).

Crash

While approaching Kurumoch Airport, Captain Kliuyev made a bet with First Officer Zhirnov that he could make an instrument-only approach with curtained cockpit windows, thus having no visual contact with the ground, instead of an NDB approach, suggested by the air traffic control. Kliuyev further ignored the ground-proximity warning at an altitude of 62 - 65 m and did not make the suggested go-around. The aircraft touched down on the runway at a speed of 150 kn and came to rest upside down after overrunning the runway. Sixty-eight people died during the accident and seven more in hospitals later. Among the passengers were 14 children, all of whom survived the accident. The top-secret report of the chairman of Kuibyshev oblispolkom V. A. Pogodin to Premier Nikolai Ryzhkov gave slightly different figures: of 85 passengers and eight crew members aboard, 53 passengers and five crew members died in the crash and 11 more in hospitals later.

Though Zhirnov made no attempt to avert the crash, he subsequently tried to save the passengers and died of cardiac arrest while on the way to the hospital. Kliuyev was prosecuted and sentenced to 15 years in prison, later reduced to six years served.