Aeroflot Flight 902
The aircraft's wreckage was found 28 km east of Krasnoyarsk Airport, in flat terrain with small areas of forest. Investigators subsequently determined that the plane had impacted the ground upside-down at an angle of 40°. There were no survivors.
Cause of disaster
The official cause of the disaster was reported to be a stall and loss of spatial orientation in cloud. A second theory was a loss of control due to a fire in the passenger cabin. However, damage found on the port side of the fuselage (specifically, an entry hole with signs of fire damage on the inside) was consistent with damage from an anti-aircraft missile, and there was unofficial confirmation that such a missile had gone astray during an air defense exercise in the area.
Unofficial sources indicated that a fragment of the fuselage was found with a 20 cm hole and fire damage, indicating a high-speed impact. At the time of the crash, a unit at nearby Magansk had fired anti-aircraft missiles as part of an exercise. The responsible missile had allegedly lost its intended target in a storm front before hitting the Tu-104.
References
Specific
- ^ "Criminal occurrence description – Flight 902". Aviation Safety Network. Retrieved 19 July 2013.
General
- Kasatkin, Vasiliy (17 April 2008). "Dangerous Sky (in Russian: Опасное небо)" (in Russian). Krasnoyarskiy Rabochiy (in Russian: Красноярский рабочий). Archived from the original on 1 January 2013. Retrieved 10 October 2012.