Belly Landing

On August 26, 1969, an Aeroflot Ilyushin Il‑18V was operating a flight from Sochi to Moscow. On board were 94 passengers and 7 crew members. The aircraft was scheduled to land at Vnukovo Airport and continue onward to Norilsk.

The approach to Moscow took place at night under good weather conditions. As instructed by the captain, the radio operator began reading out the landing checklist. Upon reaching the item “landing gear - down,” he did not read it aloud, nor the items that followed, since it was still too early to act on them. The captain was in a hurry to descend quickly and join a convenient approach pattern, and increased the descent rate to 28 meters per second - nearly three times the maximum permitted rate of 10 m/s.

At an altitude of 1,200 meters, ATC instructed the crew to turn in order to maintain separation from another aircraft in the vicinity. The crew began visually searching for the other aircraft. Due to the haste, they were tense and completely forgot to lower the landing gear. The situation was exacerbated by the deactivation of the landing gear warning horn, which was very loud and often interfered with crew communications. The Civil Aviation Administration allowed this horn to be turned off; however, deactivating it also disabled the gear position indicator light. Under these circumstances, the landing gear status could only be monitored via the position indicators on the instrument panel.

Once established on final approach, the flight engineer was supposed to complete the remaining checklist items, but he forgot. So did the captain. During landing preparations, the flight engineer failed to notice on the panel that the landing gear was still retracted. As a result, the Il‑18 landed on its belly with the landing gear up.

Upon impact with the concrete runway, the spinning propeller blades shattered and scattered in all directions. Some fragments penetrated the fuselage, damaging electrical wiring and hydraulic lines. The leaked hydraulic fluid ignited due to a short circuit, and a fire broke out, eventually spreading into the passenger cabin. The aircraft skidded down the runway for 1,180 meters before coming to a stop.

The flight crew were genuinely confused and unaware of what had occurred. Believing they had landed normally on the gear, they assumed the engines had caught fire. The navigator entered the cabin and found it filled with smoke. With the help of the flight attendants and passengers, he opened the forward and aft entry doors, as well as two of the four emergency exits. However, the crew initially prevented passengers from evacuating, assuming the aircraft was standing on its gear and that there was a significant drop from the exits to the ground, posing a risk of injury. Nonetheless, the panicked passengers began evacuating. The evacuation took place in darkness and chaos and lasted more than three minutes.

Airport emergency services arrived only 15 to 20 minutes later and quickly extinguished the fire. Sixteen passengers died from smoke inhalation.

The primary cause of the accident was found to be gross negligence by the captain and flight engineer in performing the landing procedures. The investigation also noted the poor crew discipline and inadequate training. In addition, the Il‑18’s landing gear warning system was criticized for its design flaw: disabling the auditory warning also disabled the visual alert.