An official inquiry into the Sept. 25 Antonov An-26 military aircraft crash in Kharkiv Oblast disclosed several key factors that, according to the probe, effectively precipitated the aviation incident that had claimed 26 lives, mostly of young air force cadets.
During a government meeting on Sept. 28, the inquiry commission head, Vice Prime Minister Oleg Uruskiy noted poor flight management control and the aircraft crew’s weak degree of emergency preparedness as primary causes.
Apart from that, according to the official, the probe also confirmed a technical failure of the aircraft left engine’s control system PRT-24, which had been reported earlier.
The malfunction effectively triggered the emergency situation at 8.36 p.m. Kyiv time, when the aircraft was carrying out a regular training flight in the vicinity of the military airfield of Chuhuiv in Kharkiv Oblast some 430 kilometers southeast of Kyiv.
Shortly after the crew reported the malfunction, it was ordered by the flight control center to abort the mission and make a landing at Chuhuiv. According to the probe, during the landing maneuver, the crew led by 30-year-old pilot Major Bohdan Kyshenya failed to equalize the thrust balance between the properly functioning right engine and the malfunctioning left one.
Then, according to the official, the crew failed to take a correct landing course by trying to establish on glide path as quickly as possible instead of slowly dropping altitude and trying to make a touchdown at the very start of the runway strip.
These factors led to the aircraft rapidly losing velocity, stalling out, and crashing at 8:45 p.m. near a local highway. Among 27 on board, only one person, a 20-year-old cadet Vyacheslav Zolochevsky, survived the crash, having sustained moderate injuries.
In the report, Uruskiy accused the officials of Kharkiv National Air Force University, which had hosted the Sept. 25 navigation training flights, of failure to ensure proper flight management and control, as well as of “systemic violations of flight safety rules.”
In particular, the university’s flight practices regularly encourage touch-and-go landings, which envisage an aircraft taking off for a new flight immediately after touching the runway, again and again, normally for the sake of saving time amid practicing multiple training landings.
The ill-fated Antonov An-26 was carrying out its sixth flight round within just several hours on Sept. 25 evening. And amid the rush, the crew ended up being unable to detect an upcoming engine malfunction, according to Uruskiy.
Besides, according to Uruskiy, the flight was overmanned in violation of safety instructions, which was also a common practice at Ukraine’s only military aviation academy. Moreover, he added, the crew lacked expertise in emergency response and analysis, which precipitated the failure to prevent the technical malfunction from escalating into a fatal factor.
Earlier, on Oct. 23, Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense said the academy’s principal Major General Oleksandr Turinskiy had been suspended from his position for the time of the investigation.
While responding to a Kyiv Post question, Uruskiy also asserted that inquiry had confirmed the fact that the ill-fated left engine AI‑24BT had seen its latest overhaul as far back as in 1990. Nonetheless, in late July 2020, experts at Motor Sich and Ivchenko-Progress aviation enterprises approved extending its operational life until June 2021 — without sending it a major overhaul.
Earlier, multiple reports in media said the fatal engine had worked over 500 hours above the norm without an overhaul by the time it was extended once again. Due to this, many in media, such as journalist Yuriy Butusov, accused Ukraine’s Air Force command of cutting corners on aircraft vital maintenance, which eventually led to the Sept. 25 crash.
Notably, the ill-fated aircraft had been in service for 43 years and spent almost 6,000 hours in the air.
Nonetheless, according to Uruskiy, “from the experts’ perspective, there were all reasons for the (failed) engine to continue being exploited.”
“By the time of the incident, the engine’s expected durability had been at the point of nearly 203 hours,” he said.
“Whether this really passes the standards of guidelines and regulations, the inquiry will be finding out to make its conclusions after appropriate evaluations.”
