​​Deadly dispute

Self-confidence is a useful quality. However, overconfident people can get involved in doubt actions, that do not lead to anything good. They think that they are in control of the situation till the last moment and admit their mistakes when it is already difficult to fix something.

On October 20, 1986, soviet Tupolev Tu-134 made an stopover at the Kurumoch airport in Kuibyshev (Samara). He followed the Sverdlovsk-Grozny route. The weather was good. The plane was flown by an experienced crew. There were no any reports of malfunctions.

At the moment of touching the runway, the liner hit its surface hard. Subsequently, eyewitnesses indicated that the plane was descending too quickly and at a strange angle. The landing gear crushed immediately after the impact. The plane layed on its belly and slid along the runway by inertia. At the same time, the Tu-134 began to incline to the right, and it began to carry off the runway. Outside the edge of the lane, the machine rolled over over the right fender upside down and stopped. At the moment of the upheaval, the right wing of the aircraft almost completely broke off and flew off to the side, and the left one folded. The plane split in two. From the destroyed fuel tanks, fuel began poured onto the red-hot turbines of the engines. A fire started.

The rescuers arrived quickly - in one and a half minutes. But, despite all their efforts, 53 passengers and 5 crew members died in the burning plane. Most of them were poisoned by combustion products. PIC, first officer, navigating officer and flight engineer received minor injuries. But first officer, saving passengers, swallowed poisonous smoke and died on the way to the hospital. Subsequently, 11 more people died in hospitals. Survived 24.

During the analysis of the wreckage of the aircraft, flight recorders were found. They shed light on the ridiculous cause of this disaster. The voice recorder recorded the commander's conversation with other crew members. During the approach, he argued with colleagues that he would land the aircraft on the runway only according to the readings of the instruments. Or as they say “blindly”. To do this, he closed the cocpit windows on the left side with curtains.

The rest of the crew did not interfere with his actions. During the approaching by instruments, the PIC made a mistake. As a result, the aircraft approached the ground with an excess of vertical speed at a too steep angle of inclination. At the last moment, the captain realized that everything was not going as it should. He instructed the flight engineer to open the curtain and he pulled the steering wheel towards him. But it was too late. Calculations made later showed that the landing gear hit the runway with a load one and a half times their ultimate strength, which is why they immediately broke.

The aircraft commander was sentenced to 15 years in prison. After the review of the sentence, the term was reduced to 6 years, which he completely served. Nothing is known about his further fate.