Aeroflot Flight 11

Aeroflot Flight 11

Industry	Aviation
Founded	October 21, 1947 (1947-10-21) (Aircraft production date)
Headquarters	Moscow , Soviet Union
Products	Passenger air transport service

Template:Multiple issues Template:Infobox aircraft occurrence Aeroflot Flight 11 met with disaster near the village of Aksha in Zabaykalsky Krai within the Russian SFSR on Tuesday, October 1 (September 30 MSK), 1957. The crash occurred during an emergency landing prompted by fuel depletion, causing the death of 27 out of the 28 people aboard the Ilyushin Il-12.

Aircraft Background

The aircraft involved, an Il-12 (also known as Il-12P), was produced at Moscow's Banner of Labor factory on October 21, 1947. It bore the factory number 30123 and serial number 123. Registered as СССР-Л1389, it was initially delivered to the USSR's Main Directorate of Civil Aviation and assigned to the Vnukovo aviation squadron of MUTA. In 1955, it was transferred to the East Siberian Directorate’s 1st Irkutsk (134th) Air Transport Squadron. By that time, it had logged a total of 9,996 flight hours.

Incident Details

On September 30, Flight 11 was operating a passenger service from Moscow to Khabarovsk. The crew was changed during a scheduled stop in Irkutsk. At 15:10 MSK, the Il-12 departed Irkutsk en route to its next scheduled stop in Chita, with an anticipated arrival at around 17:00. Onboard were five crew members and twenty-three passengers—twenty-one adults and two children. Weather forecasts predicted stratocumulus and cumulonimbus clouds between six and nine oktas at approximately 1,000 meters altitude, along with rain, icing conditions within clouds, and a north-northwest wind averaging 17 m/s from a bearing of 340°. However, actual conditions over Chita were overcast but calm with visibility extending to ten kilometers.

After leaving Irkutsk airspace, the aircraft began drifting southward from its designated course. At approximately 15:31—21 minutes post-departure—air traffic controller Butenko at Irkutsk observed via radar that the plane had strayed about seventeen kilometers south of its planned route but did not instruct the crew to correct their heading. Meanwhile, Kartavov, the flight operations manager at Irkutsk Airport, failed to monitor Flight 11 and remained unaware of this deviation.

As Flight 11 entered Ulan-Ude Airport’s airspace, controller Malkovsky neglected to activate radar surveillance or plot the aircraft’s true bearing of 92° on navigational charts. Consequently, no active tracking occurred. By this point, the aircraft was approximately thirty kilometers south of its intended path. Although the pilots recognized their southward deviation, they did not attempt to realign with the route. Even when a radio direction finder at Chita provided a bearing at 16:28 indicating their southern displacement—albeit with some inaccuracies—the crew failed to adjust their course or mark any bearings on their maps.

Upon transitioning from Irkutsk regional control into Chita center airspace, Flight 11 was between forty and fifty kilometers off course to the south. At this distance, tuning the radio compass to Beklemishevo and Chita non-directional beacons was impossible; communication with air traffic controllers could not be established either. Unable to receive navigational assistance via radio, the crew descended to an altitude of 2,400 meters and visually identified a road they believed to be the Romanovka–Chita highway north of Chita. They then followed this road southwards intending it would lead them into Chita.

In fact, this was the Darsun–Aksha road leading farther away from Chita toward the south. Although flight operations manager Makarov and controller Baranov received clear bearings from Flight 11 between 17:25 and 17:33, they failed to monitor or intervene in its progress. Despite pilot reports expressing confusion about locating non-directional beacons and inability to obtain bearings—effectively indicating they were lost—the controllers provided no guidance. The crew disregarded earlier bearings that indicated southern deviation and relied solely on visual navigation attempts; during these efforts, they twice descended over unidentified mountainous terrain.

With fuel reserves nearly exhausted following unsuccessful visual navigation efforts, at approximately 18:30 MSK the crew notified Chita air traffic control that they intended an emergency landing near a settlement they had spotted—the village of Aksha. After three unsuccessful landing attempts at this location, they aborted once more and tried again. During their fourth approach at about nine hundred meters altitude (roughly two hundred to two hundred fifty meters above ground level), the Il-12 collided with a forested hill standing one thousand meters high. The impact tore off the left wing as the aircraft struck trees before skidding through another three hundred forty meters of forested terrain while breaking apart until coming to rest on the hill’s opposite slope. The crash site lay three kilometers southeast of Aksha and one hundred ninety kilometers south of Chita. Rescue teams discovered one severely injured survivor amid twenty-seven fatalities—including all five crew members and twenty-two passengers.

Causes

The investigation commission determined that the accident resulted from a combination of mistakes and breaches committed by several parties. The flight crew bore partial responsibility, having become disoriented and subsequently executing incorrect maneuvers in an effort to regain their bearings. Additionally, air traffic controllers at the Irkutsk and Chita centers neglected to adequately track the aircraft's progress and failed to guide it back onto its intended course.

A particularly severe lapse occurred with the Chita controller, Baranov, who did not attempt to ascertain the plane's position during the two hours and fifteen minutes it remained within his jurisdiction, nor did he issue any instructions to the pilots. Notably, after the crash, Baranov tried to falsely document in the log that he had directed the crew to "take course of 3°," a command he never actually communicated. Furthermore, flight operations supervisors did not properly oversee controller activities. Upon learning that Flight 11's crew had lost orientation, they neglected to utilize available navigational aids to redirect the aircraft. Lastly, the Ulan-Ude airport controller breached protocol by failing to activate the surveillance radar or monitor the flight. The commission also highlighted deficiencies in internal management within the 134th Aviation Squadron, where leadership inadequately supervised crew operations.