TS-62 crash near Minsk
Aeroflot (Moscow Directorate of Transport Aviation of the Civil Air Fleet, 15th Aviation Transport Detachment) TS-62 · Not determined
From Minsk to Vnukovo (Moscow, RSFSR)
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
- 3 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- Unknown
- Occupants
- Unknown
- Survivors
- 1
- 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
TS-62
- 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-L1017
- Onboard fatalities
- 3
- Route
- From MinskTo Vnukovo (Moscow, RSFSR)
Cause areas
- Not determined › Not determined
From the investigation findings the Wikipedia article reports, sorted into the NTSB's cause areas with AI assistance.
Not plotted · Not plotted: the Wikipedia article gives no coordinates, and its site names no town or airport that matches exactly.
From the Wikipedia article
On Thursday, 30 December 1948, in Minsk District of Minsk Oblast, an Aeroflot TS-62 crashed shortly after departure, resulting in the deaths of 3 people.
Crash
To ferry the aircraft, a crew from the 15th Aviation Transport Detachment arrived, consisting of commander Timofey Gavrilov, co-pilot Fyodor Mazurov, flight engineer Nikolay Kryuchkov and radio operator Pyotr Malinin. For various reasons the departure was delayed until 30 December, and no test flight of the aircraft was carried out.
On the 30th at 08:25 the director of Minsk airport received a storm warning, according to which from 09:30 until 13:30 the cloud base was expected to drop below 100 metres, with fog forming and visibility of less than 1000 metres. The weather minimum for this airport was as follows: a cloud height of 100 metres with a horizontal visibility of 1000 metres. However, the crews of aircraft that departed at 08:30 and 08:45 reported that the cloud had already come down to 75 metres. After that, the commander of the crew of the TS-62 being ferried was issued a weather bulletin, which gave a cloud height of 75 metres and a horizontal visibility of 2 kilometres. The weather was below the required minimum, yet at 09:15 aircraft USSR-L1017 departed from the airport on a magnetic heading of 300°. The crew reported the takeoff, after which it never made contact again.
The aircraft made its first turn and entered cloud. However, a minute to a minute and a half later, according to eyewitnesses, it emerged from the clouds again in the area of the village of Petrovshchina, flying with a right bank. The TS-62 descended and for 50 metres scraped the ground, after which it rose, flew 25 metres, descended and again began to scrape the ground for 30 metres, then lifted off again, but after 20 metres struck the ground with its nose, right engine and wing. The wing was torn off, but the TS-62 lifted off, turned 180° in flight and 100 metres from the previous impact struck the ground again and caught fire. The TS-62 crashed 2 kilometres north-west (azimuth 300°) of the departure airport. The commander, co-pilot and flight engineer were killed; the radio operator was bruised but survived.
Among those killed in the crash was Hero of the Soviet Union, Air Force Major Timofey Kuzmich Gavrilov (the crew commander).
Investigation and cause
Investigation
Initially the investigating commission concluded that the cause of the crash was a change in the repair work, as a result of which an old wingtip fairing was fitted, while the repair team could not inspect its internal structural members, which could have been damaged in a previous incident. Thus, in the commission's opinion, the wingtip fairing deformed, as a result of which the aileron on the right wing jammed.
However, the State Research Institute of the Civil Air Fleet soon carried out tests which showed the initial version to be mistaken. The repair team had put 8 patches on the damaged areas, and tests of the fairing showed that the repair allowed the aircraft to be ferried safely to its base at Vnukovo. The test data revealed that on this type of aircraft the aileron jams due to a 10° bend of the wingtip fairing, while the wingtip fairing itself fails even earlier, under a load of 1200 kilograms, which is 30 % more than the maximum design load on this assembly. On the basis of the tests, the State Research Institute of the Civil Air Fleet concluded:The cause of the crash could not have been jamming of the aileron due to deformation of the wingtip fairing. Jamming occurs only upon complete failure of the fairing. In that case the aileron is freed from jamming with a force on the control wheel of 30-40 kg. Failure of the wingtip fairing in the air is possible only if 70-80% of its structural members are out of action. The inspected structural members of the wingtip fairing of aircraft L-1017 give no grounds to believe that it was released for flight with such a weakening.
The real cause of the crash was never established.
Translated into English with AI assistance from the Russian Wikipedia article “Катастрофа ТС-62 под Минском” (revision 154269039, 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: Катастрофа ТС-62 под Минском
- Article
- Катастрофа ТС-62 под Минском
- Translation
- Into English with AI assistance; names of linked operators and aircraft types from Wikidata. It may contain errors.
- Revision
- 154269039 · 2026-08-06 · retrieved 2026-09-19
- Wikidata
- Q16662528
- 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 "Катастрофа ТС-62 под Минском" (page 4474379, revision 154269039), translated into English with AI assistance
- Date
- Wikipedia infobox: date
- Place and country
- Wikipedia infobox: site
- Map position
- none
- Aircraft, operator and route
- Wikipedia infobox: aircraft type, registration, operator, origin and destination; route airports from the linked airport articles' Wikidata codes (OurAirports)
- Operation
- Reviewed correction (2026-09-26): An Aeroflot aircraft being ferried by a crew from an Aeroflot transport detachment: an airline ferry flight. The article: "an Aeroflot TS-62 crashed shortly after departure"
- 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.