Aeroflot Flight 40

On 6 July 1962, on the domestic Soviet scheduled flight Aeroflot Flight 40 from Bukhara to Tashkent, the Il-14 in service crash-landed after an engine failure; 11 of the 38 occupants died. Among the injured passengers was an American student, which is how the accident became known in the West.

Course of events

On that day the aircraft was to operate the double flight Aeroflot Flight 39/40 Tashkent-Samarkand-Bukhara-Tashkent. At 10:05 local time the Il-14 took off in clear weather as Flight 40 and climbed to a cruising altitude of 3000 m. At 10:35 the pilots reported the failure of the right engine due to the burning out of cylinder No. 2 and requested clearance to continue the flight to Tashkent at 2400 m. Captain Volosovich followed the advice of flight engineer Ananyev to forgo an emergency landing and thereby avoid receiving an entry in his personnel file. At the time of the engine failure he could have abandoned the onward flight and landed in Bukhara (135 km) or Navoiy (65 km), even if they had decided to do so 10 minutes later, although by then a landing in Bukhara would already have been less safe. The air traffic controllers issued no landing recommendation and did not otherwise intervene in the situation. After receiving descent clearance the aircraft descended to 1500 m and then approached to within 120 km of Tashkent over the next 15 minutes.

Volosovich was focused on merely continuing the flight on one engine, and Ananyev, without reporting it, throttled back the functioning left engine for fear of its failure; he did not realise that the aircraft could then no longer maintain altitude. Volosovich in turn did not notice the steady loss of altitude either, as he was not monitoring the altitude, and he also missed the opportunity to land with the gear retracted at Shardara airfield.

Later on the pilots reported an altitude of 400 m and a normal temperature in the left engine. The pilots' superior, who had meanwhile arrived in Tashkent, instructed them to increase thrust back to the normal value. Because of interference in the radio communications, the pilots did not understand the instruction and followed it only when the Il-14 had descended to 200 m. After a further 5 minutes of flight, at an altitude of 100 m, the pilots attempted to start the right engine and for this purpose took the propeller out of the feathered position. The resulting increase in drag led to a drop in speed and a stall, whereupon the aircraft rolled to the right and the right wing grazed the 2.5 m high fence of a cattle-breeding farm named after Friedrich Engels, and at 12:15 it struck a cotton field 50 m further on, 34 km from Tashkent. As a result the fuselage broke into 3 parts and the left engine broke off the wing, without a fire breaking out. Nine passengers died at the accident site, two more the following day in hospital.