Pavlodar collision

The Pavlodar collision was an aviation accident that occurred on Sunday, 9 September 1990 at Pavlodar Airport, when two Yak-40s of the Aeroflot enterprise collided. The accident caused no fatalities.

Accident

Aircraft 87914 was operating a flight to Pavlodar. It was flown by a crew whose captain (aircraft commander) was V. V. Kotov. On board were 4 crew members and 22 passengers. Since another aircraft was already approaching the airport to land ahead of it, the circuit controller instructed the crew to turn from heading 140° to heading 115° in order to create the necessary longitudinal separation between the aircraft. But when Captain Kotov saw the aircraft approaching ahead, he prematurely turned back onto the landing course and performed an S-shaped manoeuvre to create longitudinal separation.

It is worth noting that Pavlodar Airport has two runways: a paved one, onto which the approach was being made, and an unpaved one. To save time, after passing the outer marker the captain asked the controller for permission to land on the unpaved runway, but the controller replied: "Landing to follow." On approaching the inner marker, the Yak-40 was in landing configuration (landing gear and flaps extended) relative to the paved runway and at the same time outside the zone of permissible lateral deviations relative to the unpaved runway. Seeing that an aircraft had landed on the paved runway, the Yak-40 captain again asked the controller for permission to land on the unpaved runway, and then, without waiting for a reply, turned towards it on his own initiative. But when the airliner was at a height of 50 metres, 300 metres from the threshold of the paved runway and 50 metres to the left of its centreline, the controller gave clearance to land on the paved runway. Although the lateral deviation at that moment exceeded the maximum permissible for such a landing, the crew did not go around, but made a right turn towards the paved runway and at a height of 15 metres extended the flaps further to the landing position (15°).

Because of the sharp right turn, the airliner crossed the runway centreline and was now to the right of it, so the crew began a left turn. During this manoeuvre, at a speed of 205 km/h and with a slight left bank, the Yak-40 touched down on its nose gear on the right half of the runway, 7–10 metres from its edge and at a left angle of 19°. Having barely touched the runway surface, the aircraft started to rise into the air again, but the captain immediately pushed the elevator down, so after 30 metres the aircraft touched the runway again, and a couple of seconds later it crossed the centreline. To straighten it along the runway axis and also to avoid running off to the left, the rudder was deflected to the right, but so vigorously that the Yak-40 now swung sharply to the right, ran off the runway and sped towards the apron. Trying to avoid a collision with the aircraft parked on the apron, the captain applied differential wheel braking and tried to turn away to the left, but these measures proved ineffective.

At a speed of 105 km/h, aircraft USSR-87914 struck the parked Yak-40 USSR-87451 with its left wing and cut it in half, after which it came to a stop itself. In this accident nobody on board 87914 was killed, but the aircraft were destroyed.,