Aeroflot Flight 17
Ilyushin Il-12 and Unknown · Loss of control after lightning strike
Event
- Event typeAccident: someone killed or seriously injured, or the aircraft substantially damaged (NTSB definition). Incident: an occurrence that affected or could have affected safety, short of that. Glossary
- Accident
- Event fatalities
- 25 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- Unknown
- Occupants
- Unknown
- Survivors
- 0
- InjuriesFatal: death within 30 days. Serious: over 48 hours in hospital within a week, most broken bones, severe bleeding, nerve or organ damage, or serious burns. Minor: anything less. Glossary
- Unknown
- OperationWhat kind of flying it was, grouped by the rules it flew under: airline (US Part 121), air taxi and commuter (Part 135), general aviation (Part 91 and similar), military or government. Glossary
- Airline
Aircraft 1 · Ilyushin Il-12
- Aircraft type
- Ilyushin IL-12
- Category
- Airplane · from aircraft type
- RegistrationThe aircraft's tail number, such as N12345 or G-ABCD. Registrations are reissued, so the same one years apart can be a different aircraft. Glossary
- CCCP-L1791 (SSSR-L1791)
- Operator
- Aeroflot
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Vnukovo International Airport (VKO)To Krasnoyarsk International Airport (KJA)
Aircraft 2 · Unknown
- RegistrationThe aircraft's tail number, such as N12345 or G-ABCD. Registrations are reissued, so the same one years apart can be a different aircraft. Glossary
- Unknown
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo not recorded
Cause areas
- Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
- Personnel issues › Physical
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
- Environmental issues › Operating environment
From the investigation findings the Wikipedia article reports, sorted into the NTSB's cause areas with AI assistance.
Approximate · Estimated position: Novosibirsk, near the place the Wikipedia article names. Not the accident site.
From the Wikipedia article
On 13 May 1949 an Ilyushin Il-12P crashed on the 2nd leg of the domestic Soviet scheduled flight Aeroflot Flight 17, which was to run from Moscow to Krasnoyarsk via Omsk and Novosibirsk; all 25 occupants died. It was the most serious accident involving an Ilyushin Il-12 up to that time.
Course of events
All times are Moscow Time (MSK).
The aircraft took off from Omsk at 12:13. At 13:28 the pilots received permission to enter Novosibirsk airspace, having already requested it three times at 13:00. Because of strong atmospheric interference, communication was unstable and could only be restored from 14:00. While the pilots waited for landing clearance, they flew a holding pattern. The approach controller in Novosibirsk finally gave the clearance as well as permission to descend to 700 m. After the pilots radioed at 14:07 that they were in a cloud and were looking out for the ground from time to time, there was no further contact.
Eyewitnesses reported for a period from 14:00 to 14:10 that the aircraft was flying in a thundercloud and broke out of it at 70–100 m. It then crashed at 14:10 with a 65° right bank, 12 km from Novosibirsk Airport, into a 4 m high earth mound. The wreckage was flung over the mound and burned out.
Investigation and cause
Cause
On the basis of the actual weather data for the time of the accident, the investigators concluded that at 14:07 the pilots, without knowing it, entered a thundercloud in which strong gusts occurred. At that moment lightning struck, whereupon co-pilot Chebotarev, as his posthumous autopsy proved, and radio operator Mogilnitsky lost consciousness. Chebotarev fell onto the control yoke and jammed it, which is why Captain Latukhov, who was probably, just like flight engineer Kartavy, impaired and in shock, had difficulty controlling the aircraft. Unable to see anything in the dense hail and rain, and no longer keeping the instruments in view, he flew a U-turn during which the Il-12 banked ever more steeply to the right and crashed.
The following were given as contributing factors:
1) Several dangerous weather phenomena that occurred were not forecast, including a thunderstorm on the first half of the route
2) Captain Latukhov's decision to fly into the cloud
3) Inadequate flight monitoring, to which the unstable radio link, the inadequate weather forecast, the failure to notify the pilots in time and the poor communication between the weather services at the airports also contributed:
Thus the air traffic controller in Omsk had already received three thunderstorm warnings between 12:00 and 12:35, but did not pass them on and also gave no instructions to the pilots to abort the onward flight.
Translated into English with AI assistance from the German Wikipedia article “Aeroflot-Flug 17” (revision 251152372, retrieved 2026-09-19) by its authors, under CC BY-SA 4.0. Extracted as plain text: references, tables, images and some sections are left out; the translation may contain errors, and long articles were cut to their first 700 words. Read the article
Sources
German Wikipedia article: Aeroflot-Flug 17
- Article
- Aeroflot-Flug 17
- Translation
- Into English with AI assistance; names of linked operators and aircraft types from Wikidata. It may contain errors.
- Revision
- 251152372 · 2024-12-11 · retrieved 2026-09-19
- Wikidata
- Q17563051
- Licence
- Text CC BY-SA 4.0, by the article's authors; Wikidata CC0; town positions GeoNames (CC BY 4.0)
Where each value comes from
- Record
- de Wikipedia article "Aeroflot-Flug 17" (page 11296781, revision 251152372), translated into English with AI assistance
- Date
- Wikipedia infobox: date
- Place and country
- Wikipedia infobox: site
- Map position
- place the Wikipedia infobox site links (Wikidata coordinates)
- Aircraft, operator and route
- Wikipedia infobox: aircraft type, registration, operator, origin and destination; route airports from the linked airport articles' Wikidata codes (OurAirports)
- Operation
- flight number in the article title
- Fatalities
- Wikipedia infobox: total_fatalities
- Ground fatalities
- not stated in the Wikipedia infobox
- Summary
- Wikipedia article lead
Source notes (1)
- Wikipedia · Facts from the German Wikipedia article's infobox, translated into English with AI assistance, not checked against an investigation report. Independent review pending.