Baltic Cargo

On the night of March 21-22, 1979, an Aeroflot Tu-134A was operating a cargo flight from Omsk to Liepaja, Latvian SSR, with an intermediate stop in Gorky. There were five crew members on board. The aircraft had originally been built as a passenger jet, but it had later been converted for cargo use. The conversion was a very simple one - all passenger seats had merely been removed, leaving a large open cabin.

In Omsk, radio factory components were loaded onto the aircraft. Because the converted aircraft had not been fitted with a cargo door, the freight had to be loaded through the forward passenger door. During loading, the workers tried to make the job easier for themselves. The lightest crates were carried to the rear of the cabin, while the heaviest ones were placed in the forward section, closer to the door. The cargo was not weighed, and no weight and balance chart was prepared. As a result, the aircraft's center of gravity exceeded the maximum allowable forward limit. In addition, the Tu-134 was overloaded by 752 kilograms.

The aircraft approached Liepaja in darkness. Wet snow was falling in the airport area, and the vertical visibility was only 100 meters. This was below the airport's weather minimums. Under such conditions, the controller should have directed the Tu-134 to an alternate airfield, but did not do so.

The pilots began descending immediately after extending the flaps. Because of the improper loading, the aircraft was not stabilized in level flight until it was down to 310 meters and flying at 265 km/h. Even then, it intercepted the glide path late and was constantly oscillating from side to side and up and down.

While still in cloud, the crew resumed the descent even though the aircraft was already to the right of the localizer and below the glide path. At decision height, 80 meters, the crew still had no visual contact with the ground, yet they did not initiate a go-around. Instead, descending at 8 meters per second, the pilots turned the aircraft left in an attempt to regain the approach course.

At 60 meters, the crew finally decided to go around. However, the overloaded aircraft responded sluggishly to control inputs and continued descending. About 1.5 kilometers short of the runway and 155 meters to the right of its centerline, the Tu-134, flying only 10 to 12 meters above the ground, struck trees with its left wing. The impact yawed the aircraft to the left, after which it slammed into a railway embankment, broke apart, and caught fire. Of the five crew members on board, only the flight engineer survived, suffering injuries.

The investigation commission named pilot error as the immediate cause of the crash. The crew attempted to land in actual weather conditions below the established minimums. After failing to acquire visual contact with the ground at decision height, they did not go around. Instead, they continued the descent at a high rate, trying to pick up the ground visually, which made a safe go-around impossible. The accident was further contributed to by the improper loading of the aircraft and by inadequate meteorological support at the airport.