Il-12 crash in the Lazo District

The Il-12 crash in Lazo District was an aviation accident involving an Il-12P aircraft of Aeroflot that occurred on Friday, 19 September 1958 in Lazo District (Khabarovsk Krai), killing 28 people.

Crash

Aircraft L3904 was operating an unscheduled flight from Magadan to Khabarovsk with intermediate landings in Okhotsk and Nikolayevsk-on-Amur. The first stage of the flight went without deviations. During flight preparation the airport navigator did not check whether the crew had correctly calculated the flight, and the flight plan was not approved. Nevertheless, the airport controller authorised the flight, so with 4 crew members and 24 passengers (21 adults and 3 children) on board the Il-12 took off from Okhotsk. By that time, due to unfavourable weather conditions, the airport of Nikolayevsk-on-Amur was closed, so the aircraft was to overfly it without landing. According to the weather forecast issued to the crew, on the Okhotsk—Nikolayevsk—Khabarovsk route continuous middle cloud was expected, and on the section from Nikolayevsk to Komsomolsk nimbostratus and fractonimbus cloud was expected with a base of 200–300 metres (relative to the level of Okhotsk airfield), with icing, precipitation and visibility of about 2–4 kilometres. Towards the end of the route the cloud base was expected to rise to 300–600 metres and visibility to increase to 10 kilometres. Hills obscured by cloud. In Khabarovsk itself variable (6–9 oktas) stratocumulus middle cloud was forecast with a base of 300–600 metres, rain, visibility over 10 kilometres and a westerly wind of 5–8 m/s. Later, during the crash investigation, statements were taken from crews who had flown this route before and after aircraft L3904. From these statements it followed that on the route there was in fact dry and wet snow, icing up to moderate was observed, and the wind was in fact northerly and north-westerly at up to 19 m/s, that is, the weather forecast issued in Okhotsk proved inaccurate. In addition, because of the falling snow the range of the homing beacons dropped to 15–20 kilometres and two-way radio communication deteriorated, while the radio compasses worked unstably. Besides this, commander Konoplev did not visit the aviation meteorological station (AMSG) and did not receive a synoptic briefing.

On the Okhotsk—Nikolayevsk section the crew took a bearing three times, thanks to which 1 hour 3 minutes after departure they remained on the track line. Then at 11:58 the crew tried to contact the controller of Nikolayevsk airport, but these attempts were unsuccessful. At 12:22 aircraft L3904 reported passing Nikolayevsk, but no confirmation was given by the Nikolayevsk controller and the exact point of passage was not determined. The Nikolayevsk airport controller himself passed the time of passage to the Khabarovsk area control service, but did not mention that the time of passage had not been precisely determined and that contact with the aircraft had never been established. At 13:16, flying at flight level 2700 metres with a ground speed of 350 km/h, the crew reported passing Nizhnetambovskoye, adding that they could not hear the signal from the homing beacons. At 13:32 aircraft L3904 reported visually passing Komsomolsk, although, as other crews stated, conditions for visual flight in the Komsomolsk area were absent. At 13:51 passage of Troitskoye was reported, without stating the flight conditions. At 14:14 the aircraft transmitted: By calculation passed Elabuga, 2700 metres in cloud, compass not working, let them clear descent and guide us out by radar. After Troitskoye was passed, the area control service controller handed aircraft over to the GKDP. The RDS controller did not receive confirmation that contact with the GKDP had been established, and he himself in turn did not report the aircraft being handed over to the GKDP. Aircraft L3904 could not establish contact directly with the GKDP and communicated via aircraft 12586 (Il-12P, serial number 83013009), thanks to which it received permission to descend to a height of 2400 metres. The GKDP duty officer informed the RDS controller that contact with aircraft L3904 could not be established. The radio operator of aircraft L3904 spent a long time unsuccessfully trying to reach the GKDP direction finder via VHF, while in parallel establishing contact with the HF direction finder of Khabarovsk airport, from which he received a bearing: approximately 312°. The direction-finder operator then passed this bearing, with the aircraft number, to RDS-2, which was working the western direction, but was told by telephone that there was no such aircraft. This bearing was not reported to the controllers or the flight director.

Then at 14:20 an air defence duty officer contacted RDS-2 by telephone and reported that an unidentified aircraft was being observed near Edinka at the intersection of the Edinka—Khabarovsk route. However, he was answered not by the RDS-2 controller but by some female voice, who stated that none of their aircraft were in that area. The commission later came to the opinion that this voice belonged to the RDS operator, although she denied it. At 14:23 the crew of aircraft L3904 made another attempt to obtain a bearing from the HF direction finder, but it was unsuccessful. Somewhere between …