Aeroflot Flight 3153

On 7 March 1968, a Tupolev Tu-124 crashed on take-off on Aeroflot Flight 3153, a domestic Soviet scheduled flight from Volgograd via Rostov-on-Don to Odesa, killing one crew member.

Flight

At 10:20 the aircraft accelerated for take-off, with the flaps set to a position of 10°. The lift-off proceeded normally until the aircraft had reached a height of 3 to 5 m and covered a distance of 100 to 120 m. It then banked to the left. The pilots tried to counteract this by turning the control wheels to the right. At a height of 10 to 15 m the aircraft began to descend, after it had flown 400 m. It touched down again 7 to 8 seconds after lift-off, 23 m to the left of the runway and 1500 m from its beginning. In doing so, the Tu-124 lost part of the left wing and then broke into three main sections, which were not separated from one another. The aircraft came to a standstill 83 m to the left of the runway and 1640 m from its beginning. No fire broke out, because the captain had shut down the engines while still in flight.

The navigator was killed because the forward fuselage section was destroyed. The first officer, the flight engineer, the flight attendant and one passenger suffered serious injuries; the remaining occupants suffered either no injuries or only minor ones.

Cause of the accident

It was determined that during the take-off run, at a speed of 260 km/h, the spoilers were inadvertently extended. At this point the aircraft was just about to lift off and had covered a take-off distance of 1000 m. The extension of the spoilers was caused by the unfortunately chosen positioning of the corresponding switch on the right side of the control wheel. Since the spoilers took about three seconds to extend after activation, the aircraft was able to lift off, but then lost lift and crashed.