Aeroflot Flight 227 (1969) should not be confused with Aeroflot Flight 227 (1956).
| Aeroflot Flight 227 | |
| Occurrence Type: | Accident |
| Summary: | Divergent opinions on the cause |
| Site: | Nizhnevartovsk Airport (Yugra, RSFSR, USSR) |
| Aircraft Type: | Antonov An-24B |
| Operator: | Aeroflot (Tyumen Civil Aviation Directorate, 2nd Tyumen OAO) |
| Tail Number: | СССР-47772 |
| Origin: | Roshchino, Tyumen |
| Stopover: | Surgut |
| Last Stopover: | Nizhnevartovsk |
| Destination: | Nizhnevartovsk |
| Occupants: | 56 |
| Passengers: | 52 |
| Crew: | 4 |
| Fatalities: | 24 |
| Survivors: | 32 |
Aeroflot Flight 227 was a scheduled scheduled passenger flight in the Soviet Union between Roshchino and Nizhnevartovsk. On 13 October 1969, during landing at Nizhnevartovsk Airport, the flight's Antonov An-24B crashed, resulting in 24 fatalities.
The Antonov An-24 with registration 47772 (serial number 79901404) was produced by the Antonov plant in 1967. At the time of the accident, the airliner had accumulated a total of 2,756 flight hours and 2,298 landings.
The aircraft was operating flight 227 from Tyumen—Surgut—Nizhnevartovsk. The flight was piloted by a crew from the 259th Flight Squadron, consisting of Captain (CPT) Andrey Mikhailovich Filippov, First Officer Alexey Petrovich Khromchenkov, and Flight Engineer Vasily Vasilyevich Davydov. The cabin crew included flight attendant Tamara Mikhailovna Korotkova. There were 52 passengers on board.[1]
In Nizhnevartovsk, there were clouds with a base at 350 meters and visibility of 3,500 meters. The first approach was unsuccessful, and at 17:19, the crew went around for another attempt. At 17:26, the captain reported to the controller that they were ready for landing and confirmed visual contact with the runway. While on final approach, the aircraft rolled right and at 1,100 meters from the runway threshold (190 meters to the outer marker), and 50 meters to the right of its centerline, it struck the ground among small trees, subsequently breaking apart and partially burning. The accident resulted in the deaths of the First Officer, flight attendant, and 22 passengers.
The commission members could not reach a consensus, leading to two different conclusions regarding the causes.
The occurrence of negative thrust from the propellers during the landing descent phase was due to the throttle lever being set to 12° by the fuel control lever indicator (a design flaw in the aircraft). The attempt to correct this by increasing the engines to takeoff power and retracting the landing gear was unsuccessful due to the low altitude. The crew did not violate the Flight Operations Manual.
An error in estimating the altitude and distance from the runway during the final approach led to a descent below the normal glide path, followed by a stall during an attempted go-around upon realizing the dangerously low altitude. The stall was caused by extending the flaps to 17° instead of 38° as per the FOM.