Unauthorized Landing

On December 11, 1997, a Mi-8TV helicopter was operating a medical evacuation flight in the Russian Arctic. On board were three crew members and a doctor. The helicopter departed from Naryan-Mar, picked up patients in the village of Nizhnyaya Pesha and the settlement of Volokovaya, and was returning to base. In total, seven passengers had boarded the aircraft. At 16:57, the helicopter landed on the runway at Naryan-Mar Airport and, after turning 180 degrees, began taxiing to vacate the runway. Its air traffic control was being handled by controllers from the civil sector.

Shortly before that, an An-12BP had begun its approach to Naryan-Mar. It was flying in from Yermolino in the Kaluga Region, carrying cargo for local business owners. On board were seven crew members and two cargo escorts. As the aircraft neared its destination, the crew was informed that the weather was deteriorating, and ten minutes before landing a storm warning was issued reporting visibility at the airport of 1,000 meters.

The aircraft was being controlled by both civil and military air traffic controllers. At 16:54, the area controller instructed the crew to switch to the landing zone controller in the military sector. He informed the crew that the weather was below minimums, and when they requested permission to carry out an approach and landing, he instructed them to overfly the runway in order to assess the visibility.

At a distance of 8 kilometers, the An-12 crew reported that they had the runway in sight. The landing zone controller then cleared them to descend to the inner marker and subsequently instructed them to maintain level flight. The An-12 crew did not report that they were ready to land and did not receive landing clearance. The pilots assumed that the instruction to continue level flight had been given because of the poor visibility, but since they already had the runway in sight, they decided to land instead of making a low pass.

At that moment, the Mi-8 was still taxiing and needed only about 10 more seconds to clear the runway. The An-12 crew spotted it at the last moment after switching on the landing lights. Before the aircraft could even touch down, the An-12, still at high speed, struck the Mi-8 with its right wing. The impact hit the central section of the helicopter’s fuselage, where the passenger cabin and a fuel tank were located. An explosion followed, and the Mi-8 was engulfed in flames. At the same time, the helicopter’s main rotor blades ripped into the fuselage of the An-12. With its nose section torn open, its right wing badly damaged, and its vertical tail fin sheared off, the aircraft slid a short distance along the runway before coming to a stop.

Everyone in the helicopter’s cabin was killed - seven passengers and the doctor. The pilots’ cockpit, however, was torn off and thrown clear by the blast, which saved the lives of all three crew members, although they were injured. On board the An-12, four people were injured - three crew members and one cargo escort. The Mi-8 was completely destroyed by impact and fire, while the An-12 was damaged beyond repair, written off, and scrapped in 2001.

The investigation found that the crash had been caused by a lack of coordination between the An-12 crew and air traffic controllers. Later, a court found two military controllers and the captain of the An-12 guilty of causing the accident, while the civil controller was acquitted. However, all of those convicted were later granted amnesty.