Yesterday, arriving in Barajas Airport (MAD) met a Russian old friend, pilot now retired.
Taking a coffee, asked him about his glances in the TU-154 crash out of Sochi.
Besides he was an IL (Ilushin) specialist, he's been formed in Soviet (jet-era) air-industry so he's used to the construction philosophy that aimed those decades (mainly the 60s and 70s).
First, he's been very DIRECT on one subject: that is very "complicated" to misconfigure a Russian old bird for the TO protocol. He insisted on this: there are lots of procedures, one linked to the other that makes a couple of professionals make a stound mistake of fatal consequences almost impossible.
And added: "take a look at some crash record of Russian ACs and see how many crashed on TOs and how many the further investigation determined it was caused by an erroneous configuration for TO".
BTW: TU-154 is NOT my favourite plane to fly -as passenger, I mean- but have to admit it looks elegant and strong in its rather "old" lines.
So I took some time to investigate about TU-154 stats.
Registered out of the production line are +/- 1030 units during the almost 40 years of prod.
Is one of the fastest civilian jets ever made (up to 990 km/h at cruise level)
Important accidents involving this AC: +/- 30.
This meaning: the qualifying as "accident" vary with interpretations.
First conclusion: it's a very safe bird, with a rate of -3 to -4 %, which is NOT BAD. Same safety figures shared with European and American ACs.
Now come some interesting details.
- I've found ONLY ONE accident developed in TO procedure. Was due to possible windshear & thermal currents which led to an early stall in an extremely hot environment (Aeroflot 4225).
- One went down due to RADAR FAILURE.
- ONE after ATC went asleep and pilot didn't know there were maintenance vehicles on the runway.
- One after a severe ENGINE FIRE.
- One on approach due to cargo overweight and further disbalance.
- One hijacked andc then "shot-up-to-swisscheese" after a "regular" landing.
- One that stalled at FL380, followed by bad crew operations due to a very scarce instruction by the builder/airline (Aeroflot 7425)
- One on approach, found severe winshear and failed the horizontal stabilizer.
- One with a severe electrical failure (no crash, no injuries).
- One after TO (yes, but...) the crew IGNORED warning ligths telling problems to eng #2 believing the SYSTEM WAS WORKING BADLY and decided to take-off. Period.
- One run out of fuel. Crashed in bad-foggy weather in Libya.
- One "in flight" due to a FIRE in the tail section followed by a lack of control.
- One (another) during TO, but... This is Cubana de Aviación, Flight 389 from Quito to Guayaquil. After TWO rejected TOs, the stone-headed PiC decided for a third intent in which the crew FORGOT to select the hydraulic valves switches, with the result of a failed TO, runway excursion and a general disaster in a close to the airport neigbourhood. Avoidable and
- One crashing during approach, possible bad maintenance of the whole AC.
- One "in flight" due to AP malfunction after a sequence of strong vibrations during more than 15 minutes.
- One in flight with no causes found.
- One down after an unrecoverable spiral while in cruise at FL380.
- One that caught FIRE before TO (only two dead of a total of 160)
- One possibly gunned close to Lebanon coast.
- One made a bad approach under extreme Wx conditions (Polish AF plane near Smolensk).
- One that supposedly was flying above recommended cruise-ceiling, had a stall, then a flat spin. Possible crew overlooked the controls of the AC.
- One down after a blast (explosives, intentional) on board.
- One shot down by a military S-200 (Ukraine).
- One "destroyed" on landing. Had a strong tail strike but were no injuries, no dead.
- One deployed very bad approach procedures with the following crash. No survivors.
- One stalled fatally on approach.
- One crashed on a mountain top after a sequence of crew's small navigation errors.
- One crashed after TWO ENGINES failed after TO, then the THIRD. Possibly bird ingestion by fans.
- TWO TU-154s went down after MID-AIR collisions.
.......
And now we come back to present: my Russian friend told me that's not very understandable that a professional and experienced military pilot and his FO (supposedly also experienced and skilled enough to co-fly this bird) make a BAD CONFIGURATION FOR TAKE OFF in a Tu-154.
Asked if was a possibility the mentioned confusion of levers (flaps/gear), he doubted energically.