Nedakonice air crash

The Nedakonice air crash occurred on 7 July 1977. On that day, during a factory test flight by LET Kunovice, a Let L-410UVP broke apart in the air near the village of Nedakonice, not far from the manufacturer's plant, and crashed to the ground, killing all four occupants. It was the first crash of a Let L-410 with fatalities.

Accident sequence

The test flight involved checking the effectiveness of the rudder trim at different speeds and at different angles of its deflection. The test programme was almost complete. All that remained to be flown was a short segment at maximum speed when the tail unit could not withstand the loads and broke off. The aircraft then crashed to the ground, killing all four occupants. Between the structural failure and the impact the crew had no time to determine the extent of the damage to the aircraft, and so the last radio message was: “… Tower, our rudder has torn off!”. In the few seconds between the tearing-off of the entire rear fuselage section and the impact, Let chief pilot Vladimir Vlk was able to switch off most of the circuit breakers on the overhead panel and reduce the power of the engines.

Owing to the negligence of the Czech pilots there were no parachutes on board that the pilots could have used to jump from the crashing aircraft and so save their lives. The Czechs were so convinced of the reliability of their aircraft type that all test flights up to that day had been flown without parachutes on board. The aircraft crashed not far from Nedakonice railway station, seven kilometres from the airfield, burying all four occupants under the wreckage. Let's works fire brigade, which rushed to the scene, could only confirm the deaths of the four crew members.

Accident investigation

The accident report was published in February 1978. According to the report, the cause of the accident was the tearing-off of the rear fuselage section. This had occurred when the pilot in command applied the rudder pedal hard, which corresponded to a rudder deflection of around 13 degrees while flying at full power. As a result, the structural load limits of the aircraft had been exceeded.