Transaero Flight 3809

#### *Overview*

*On november 8th, 2009, Trans Aero Flight 3809 crashed into a mountain in Yekaterinburg, Russia. The aircraft involved was a Boeing 747-300 Operated by Trans Areo. Out of the 234 people on board, only 20 survived, with 19 of them injured. The accident would go on to be the deadliest crash on Russian soil.*

#### *Aircraft and crew*

###### *Aircraft*

*The aircraft was a 19 year old Boeing 747-346, Previously operated by Sabena. It had completed well over 15,000 pressurization cycles.*

## Accident

### Summary

Gyroscope failure leading to loss of situational awareness

## Flight

###### *Crew*

*The pilot flying that day was captain Vladamir Yezofsky, he had flown almost 10,000 hours over the course of 20 years. he was 55 years old at the time of the accident. he also had training on the 747-400, 767-300, and the 737-300. the pilot monitoring was 30 year old Boris Kamoritov. he had 5 years of flying experience with 4000 flying hours*

### *Flight*

###### *Pre-cruise*

*The aircraft departed ST. petersburg on schedule, and was scheduled to arrive at Vladivostok ten hours later. after reaching 4,000 feet, the aircraft was instructed to fly east at 39,000 feet. shortly after reaching this altitude, the first officer requested climbing to 40,000 feet to avoid traffic.*

###### *Cruise*

*Flight 3809 reached cruise height at 11:57:09 PM local time. once they had leveled out, Vladamir left the cockpit to get sleep while an extra flight crew member joined Boris in the cockpit. around midnight, a flight attendant came into the cockpit asking both Boris and the other crew member if they wanted something to drink. they ended up declining the offer. around 2 hours later, Vladamir woke up and went back into the cockpit to discuss a possible go-around at Vladivostok. this conversation lasted 11 minutes.*

### Accident

##### Crash

At around 1:30 AM local time, Vladamir left the flight deck to have a conversation with the flight attendants. roughly 30 seconds after he left the cockpit, Boris noticed that the attitude indicator was at a nearly 70° bank angle. to counter-act this, he rolled the aircraft so that the attitude indicator was level. once he let go of the control column, the aircraft kept rolling past the 0° mark and started to pitch downward. before he could pull back in time, the aircraft rolled over onto its back and entered a near vertical dive. after falling nearly 1,000 feet, Boris attempted to pull the nose up. he ended up pulling so hard, the G-force exceeded 4 gs. this damaged the air frame enough to rip off the left elevator and a portion of the left inboard flap. the aircraft entered a phugoid motion and dove in a nearly 90° bank. by this point, Vladamir and anything or anyone not strapped down was being thrown around. after about 40 seconds of battling the aircraft, it had reached under 10,000 feet in altitude. at 4,000 feet, Boris started to level it out, but it was too late. the aircraft clipped a tree, removing 5 feet of the left wing. it continued on for nearly a mile before it flipped on its back and dived into a mountain. the whole over wing and front section of the aircraft was smashed into thousands of tiny pieces and was strewn over the other side of the mountain. the tail section and empennage were crushed, but mostly intact.

##### Aftermath

Any remaining survivors were left out in the wilderness for almost 10 hours before help arrived during the day. an estimated 40 people survived the initial impact, including Captain Vladamir. However, most ended up freezing to death in the conditions.

## Post accident

#### Investigation

The investigation found the cause of the accident to be a failure of the gyroscope that fed data to the instruments due to corrosion, leading to a complete loss of situational awareness of the first officer. The Russian aviation authorities, and the NTSB recommended that Transaero check all of its aircraft for corrosion and also advised to advance training on different possible scenarios.

### Modern day

As of 2023, there is no memorial for this accident. The dead were taken to Volgograd to be buried. To this day, relatives of the dead still come and visit the graves of the 214 lost in the accident. Transaero no longer exists as of today, and this flight is now operated by Aeroflot on a Boeing 777-200