An-22 crash near Tula

The An-22 crash near Tula was an aviation accident involving an An-22A “Antei” military transport aircraft of the Russian Air Force that occurred on Tuesday, 28 December 2010, in the Chernsky District of Tula Oblast near the border with Oryol Oblast, killing 12 people.

Crash

Earlier, RA-09343 had performed a special cargo flight from Khotilovo airfield (Bologoye, Tver Oblast) to Baltimor airfield (Voronezh), during which it carried a training model of a MiG-31 fighter for the Military Aviation Engineering University for the purpose of training cadets. The “Antei” was then to return to its home airfield, Migalovo (Tver). At 20:53 (according to other sources, 20:51), with 12 crew members on board and no passengers, the An-22 departed from Voronezh for Tver. The flight was to take place at a flight level of 7200 metres. But at 21:33 aircraft 09343 suddenly disappeared from the radar screen. The first information about a possible tragedy reached the duty officer of the Chernsky District Department of Internal Affairs at 21:41 from the head of the Lipitsy rural settlement, I.I. Gorkov. As a result of the searches that were organised, during the night, already on Wednesday 29 December, at 02:36, a couple of kilometres from the uninhabited village of Krasny Oktyabr in the Chernsky District of Tula Oblast, and near the border with Oryol Oblast, on the territory of the Lipitsy district forestry, the head of a farm, V.B. Kravtsov, found wreckage of the aircraft and the approximate place where the aircraft had fallen, while the site itself was found by Viktor Goloveshkin on his tractor.

The “Antei” was flying on the “Terbuny — Maloye Skuratovo” segment of the airway at a speed of 373 km/h and at an actual altitude of 7167 metres when, 30 minutes after departure, the rudder unexpectedly and sharply (in less than a couple of seconds) deflected to one side. The heavy aircraft began to roll quickly into a left bank and then went into a sideslip. The crew tried to correct the situation by deflecting the control wheels to the right by approximately 2/3 of their travel, and also by pressing on the rudder pedals, trying to return it to the neutral position, for which they had to overcome a force of 100 kilograms. But the left bank increased rapidly at a rate of 10° per second, and within three seconds a negative load factor of 0.38 g appeared. The aircraft began to lose altitude, so the pilots pulled the control columns “towards themselves”, that is, trying to raise the nose, but later returned them to their original position. As a result of these actions the vertical load factor reached 1.38 g. The “Antei” reached a supercritical angle of attack while already in a deep sideslip, after which it entered a spin. During the fall, the airframe structure began to break up due to high aerodynamic loads. At 21:23 the aircraft struck the forest at an angle of 75° and was completely destroyed. A crater 22 metres in diameter and 4 metres deep formed at the crash site. All 12 people on board were killed.