+12T ? That would a bit over the top. But if the load was the same at previous then how come they did not to hit the deck earlier.

Article claims they flew from Chkalovsky having TOW=99,6 with 24 t of fuel. At Sochi they topped it to 35,6 t.

Five months to produce credible loadsheets? Surely not!:E

@Prober,
IF the claim has any relation to the truth, one would presume that the LS prepared & presented to the crew did not reflect the correct payload.

While the TU5 is a forgiving bird with a lot of overengineering and probably you could achieve a successful planned takeoff at 10 tons over MTOW, same cannot be said if speeds and flaps settings are based on a lower weight. The table presented by Kulverstukas (http://www.pprune.org/rumours-news/5...ml#post9626860) shows a 15-20 Kph difference in reference speeds for every 10 tons of weight increase.

If they were false loadsheets done without the crew's knowledge, someone deserves a very long prison sentence. What a stupid, and tragic, waste of lives.

@Herod
With some insights into soviet and post-soviet aviation, I would not assume wilful falsification, simply a math error or ommission that went unnoticed by the crew. Probably the LS was done manually, while the layout and workflow is well designed (I used to instruct how to prepare those many moons ago) errors can still be made.

Still, the quoted numbers would imply a payload of 24 tons, (OEW is ~51 tons), that sounds unrealistically high given the known number of pax (83), so I would hold my breath on this one for the time being (unless of course there were also some undeclared long heavy olive-green wooden boxes on board, but if that was the case we will not hear about it...).

Andraz has sure more insight. However it does not make sense to keep the overload, if for some olive stuff reason or whatever, from the pilots. On that sea level takeoff they would have gotten away with adjusted speeds. At least that they made it over the fence proves this. Why endanger the people and plane?

Quote from andrasz:
"...and probably you could achieve a successful planned takeoff at 10 tons over MTOW, same cannot be said if speeds and flaps settings are based on a lower weight."

Agreed. And also the speed schedules for flaps and slat retraction, and minimum clean speed...

Is Overload the problem?
 

Assuming an overload of 12t, Kulverstukas's table (post 246) would suggest Vref(0) should be 24 km/hr higher, call it even 30 km/hr or 15 kt. But presumably (?) Vref = about 1.3 Vstall, so the stall margin would be nearer 100km/hr, and a 30 km/hr error shouldn't spell disaster. What am I missing? None of these recent revelations seem to fit the leaked voice recorder exclamations, do they?

Latest "leak" was dismissed by Investigation Committee. Exactly like previous time when "leaked" story was about somatogravic illusion.

Expected so, 24 tons for 83 pax would translate into nearly 300kg per pax, you'd need all the empty seats filled with bags to achieve this.

Something small but heavy in cargo compartment? More so, it's almost unbelievable that crew doesn't get a feeling of the load at the first takeoff and then ordered refilling to the top at the second.

Kulverstukas said "Something small but heavy in cargo compartment?". What about shifting cargo ?

It's not 748 with cargo compartment going from nose to tail. So cargo can't shift more than couple meters.

Is it confirmed no extra cargo added in Sochi?

Nothing was loaded, nobody boarded and no one leaves the plane.

You mean that as a fact ?

No fuel ?

Fuel was taken on but there was no additional extra weight in terms of passengers and cargo.

Understood.

Presumably the aircraft initially departed with full tanks?

atakacs: We aren't sure at this point but see kulverstukas post #423.