Yak-40 crash near Kutaisi

The Yak-40 crash near Kutaisi was an aviation accident that occurred on the Friday morning of 11 October 1985 in the vicinity of Kutaisi. A Yak-40 airliner of the Tbilisi Combined Aviation Detachment of the Aeroflot enterprise was operating scheduled domestic flight G-007 on the route Tbilisi — Kutaisi — Poti, but while approaching to land at Poti airport the airliner diverted to the alternate, Kutaisi-2. 8 minutes after departing from Kutaisi airfield, the airliner struck a mountain near the town of Mikha-Tskhakaya and was completely destroyed. All 14 people on board were killed — 10 passengers and 4 crew members.

Crash

On 11 October 1985, flight G-7 with 10 passengers and 4 crew members departs from Tbilisi airport, flying from Tbilisi to Poti with an intermediate stop in Kutaisi, and the flight is operated by Yak-40 tail number USSR-87803. In total there were 14 people on board: 10 passengers (9 adults and 1 child) and 4 crew members.

Since the weather in Poti had deteriorated below the meteorological minimum, flight G-7 was sent to the alternate airfield Kutaisi-2, where it landed at 09:15. Soon the weather in Poti improved, so the aircraft commander carried out the pre-flight preparation and at 09:50 decided to make the flight. In doing so he did not agree the flight level with the approach controller (DPP), taking it to be 2400 metres. Meanwhile, along the route from Kutaisi to Poti, according to the forecast, clouds at a height of 300 metres were expected, and visibility reached 3000 metres, which was below the established meteorological minimum of 400/5000 metres, that is, it ruled out the possibility of flying below the lowest flight level.

At 10:01 the Yak-40 took off from the airport on a magnetic heading of 270° (westward), after which it switched to communication with the landing system controller (DPSP), to whom it reported the completion of the take-off. The controller then gave the command to proceed to the Maglaki OPRS (outer locator) at an altitude of 300 metres. The crew asked again whether they had really been given the command to proceed at an altitude of 300 metres and not 2400 metres, to which the controller confirmed — for now proceed at 300 metres under VFR, since an An-24 airliner was approaching to land at the neighbouring airport Kutaisi-Kopitnari on a heading of 75°. At 10:03 the Yak-40 reported passing Maglaki at an altitude of 300 metres, in response to which it received an instruction to set on the altimeters the reduced minimum pressure (at sea level) of 758 mm Hg and to proceed at an altitude of 300 metres until abeam Samtredia.

Over Kutaisi at that time there were rain clouds at a height of 1000 metres and light rain was falling. But as they approached the town of Mikha-Tskhakaya, located between Kutaisi and Poti, the cloud base gradually lowered to 200 metres, and the rain intensified to a downpour. The DPP controller several times explained the navigational and meteorological situation on the route to the DPSP, and also pointed out that the crew of flight G-7 needed to climb to the assigned flight level according to the approved flight procedure. But the DPSP controller did not look into the situation on the route and ignored the remarks of the DPP controller. The aircraft was flying strictly along the track line and at 10:06 was 1.5 kilometres from the handover boundary when the DPSP controller instructed the crew to switch to communication with the approach controller.

The crew now came under the control of the DPP controller, but he in turn did not determine their position and did not inform them of it. In addition, there is a high probability that the controller on the radar screen confused the blip of the Yak-40 with the blip of the An-24 flying on an opposite heading (approaching to land at Kopitnari airport), while the distance between the aircraft was 10 kilometres. Confirmation of this is the meaningless command to the Yak-40 crew to increase the heading to 280° and proceed under VFR at an altitude of 300 metres. At the same time he did not inform the crew of the difficult weather situation on the route, which did not allow visual flight and required switching to instrument flight. In addition, the controller informed the crew about the An-24 approaching to land at the neighbouring airfield, thereby significantly restricting their options in decision-making when, after passing abeam Samtredia, it entered a zone of low cloud and heavy downpour. After the instruction to fly on a heading of 280°, the DPP controller was distracted and stopped actively controlling the flight of flight G-7. Meanwhile, flying through rain at low altitude and at high speed, with a horizontal visibility of 2000 metres, the crew could only with difficulty orient themselves by ground objects. Given the absence of monitoring of the flight by the controller, this led to the airliner starting to deviate from the route line towards the mountains, which were covered by solid cloud, and soon the deviation reached 9 kilometres.

At about 10:09 the Yak-40 flew into solid cloud. Knowing the terrain of the area over which they were flying, the aircraft commander decided, in order to avoid a collision with the mountains, to perform a left turn with a climb in order to return to the line …