Yak-40 accident in Tbilisi
Ulyanovsk Joint Aviation Detachment, Volga Civil Aviation Directorate Yakovlev Yak-40 · Design deficiencies
From Barataevka, Ulyanovsk (RSFSR, USSR) to Tbilisi (Georgian SSR, USSR)
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
- Occurrence
- Event fatalities
- 0 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- Unknown
- Occupants
- Unknown
- Survivors
- 30
- 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
- 30
- 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
Yakovlev Yak-40
- Aircraft type
- Yakovlev YAK-40
- 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-87544
- Onboard fatalities
- 0
- Route
- From Barataevka, Ulyanovsk (RSFSR, USSR)To Tbilisi (Georgian SSR, USSR)
Cause areas
- Aircraft › Aircraft systems
- Aircraft › Fluids/misc hardware
- Organizational issues › Development
From the investigation findings the Wikipedia article reports, sorted into the NTSB's cause areas with AI assistance.
Approximate · Estimated position: Tbilisi, the place the Wikipedia article names. Not the accident site.
From the Wikipedia article
The Yak-40 accident in Tbilisi was an aviation accident that occurred on the night of Monday, 2 October 1978 near Tbilisi Airport. A Yak-40 airliner of the Ulyanovsk Joint Aviation Detachment of the Aeroflot enterprise was completing a scheduled passenger flight on the route Ulyanovsk — Volgograd — Tbilisi, but while approaching Tbilisi Airport the airliner's hydraulic system failed. The crew circled in the airport area for about an hour to burn off fuel, after which the crew made a forced landing on the nose landing gear leg and overran the runway, after which it collided with a pole and fell into a pit. None of the 30 people on board — 26 passengers and 4 crew members — were killed; all were injured (3 of them seriously).
According to the causes of the accident, the main cause of the accident was the failure of the hydraulic system, which was caused by the rupture of the hydraulic tank filling pipeline due to the freezing of water condensate.
Sequence of events
On 2 October 1978, in the evening at 20:30 local time (17:30 UTC), Yak-40 USSR-87544 departs from the runway of Volgograd's Gumrak Airport with 26 passengers and 4 crew members, flying from Ulyanovsk to Tbilisi with an intermediate stop in Volgograd. In total there were 30 people on board: 26 passengers and 4 crew members.
Investigation and cause
Investigation
Conclusion: The cause of the aircraft accident is the rupture of the hydraulic tank filling pipeline due to the freezing of water condensate in it. The loss of tightness of the hydraulic line led to a drop in the hydraulic tank pressurisation provided by the engines and caused the failure of the emergency hydraulic system, which is a design deficiency in ensuring the autonomous operation of the hydraulic system, which led to the failure of the main landing gear legs and flaps to extend and to the aircraft landing on its fuselage.
On the basis of the calculations carried out, it was established that the landing distance for the Yak-40 aircraft in this flight configuration increases to 3000 m. This is not provided for by the flight manual and could not have been taken into account by the crew when calculating the landing.
Translated into English with AI assistance from the Russian Wikipedia article “Авария Як-40 в Тбилиси” (revision 154269102, 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
Russian Wikipedia article: Авария Як-40 в Тбилиси
- Article
- Авария Як-40 в Тбилиси
- Translation
- Into English with AI assistance; names of linked operators and aircraft types from Wikidata. It may contain errors.
- Revision
- 154269102 · 2026-08-06 · retrieved 2026-09-19
- 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
- ru Wikipedia article "Авария Як-40 в Тбилиси" (page 10948734, revision 154269102), 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
- "scheduled passenger flight" in the article's opening paragraph
- Fatalities
- Wikipedia infobox: aircraft fatalities
- Ground fatalities
- not stated in the Wikipedia infobox
- Summary
- Wikipedia infobox: summary
Source notes (1)
- Wikipedia · Facts from the Russian Wikipedia article's infobox, translated into English with AI assistance, not checked against an investigation report. Independent review pending.