Mi-8 crash in the Kamchatka region

The crashed helicopter Mi-8 had a tail number 25194 and belonged to the state unitary enterprise “Khalakyrskie air transportation”.

The helicopter was launched at the Kazan Helicopter Plant in 1991, was in satisfactory condition and underwent a major overhaul twice, the last time in the spring of 2003 ^{[3] [4]} .

The crew consisted of three people ^[2] :

• Guzanov Alexander - the crew commander.
• Zdor Bogdan - the second pilot.
• Osipov Igor - flight mechanic.

In total there were 17 passengers on board - employees of the Sakhalin Oblast Administration and five businessmen ^[2] :

• Mikhail Valerievich Viktorovtsev (b. 1969) - Director of Aviator.
• Mikhail Alexandrovich Goryunov (b. 1979) - Leading Specialist of the Department for Financing the Administration and Law Enforcement.
• Viktor Duredovich Gurevich (b. 1947) - First Deputy Head of the Education Department of the Sakhalin Region.
• Dmitry G. Donskoy (b. 1973) - Head of the Press Center of the Sakhalin Oblast Administration Office.
• Ilya Nikolayevich Kasyan (b. 1961) - Chief Specialist of the Press Center of the Sakhalin Oblast Administration Staff.
• Vladimir Fedorovich Kundius (born in 1953) - Chairman of the Board of Directors of Sunrise LLC.
• Kurt Nikolay Pavlovich (b. 1947) - Head of the Construction Department of the Sakhalin Region.
• Papirenko Evgeny Vladimirovich (b. 1950) - Chief State Sanitary Doctor in the Sakhalin Region.
• Leonid Pobezhimov (born 1971) - General Director of OJSC Antey.
• Rozanov Viktor Nikolaevich (b. 1958) - Acting Head of the Department of Fuel, Energy and Subsoil Use of the Sakhalin Region.
• Romanov Vladimir Ivanovich (b. 1957) - Head of the Transport and Communications Department of the Sakhalin Region.
• Russkikh Evgeny Grigorievich (b. 1941) - Head of the Department of Housing and Communal Services of the Administration of the Sakhalin Region.
• Evgeny Fedorovich Rybakov (born 1950) - Executive Director of the Directorate for the Implementation of the Federal Program for the Social and Economic Development of the Kuril Islands.
• Vladimir Alexandrovich Sibirkin (b. 1955) - Head of the Sakhalin Region Health Department.
• Evgeny V. Smykov (b. 1960) - Deputy Head of the Fisheries Department of the Sakhalin Region
• Farhutdinov Igor Pavlovich (b. 1950) - Governor of the Sakhalin Region.
• Yury Shuvalov (born 1962) - Assistant Governor of the Sakhalin Region.

On August 20, 2003, at 14:40 local time (05:40 Moscow time), two Mi-8 helicopters took off from the Izluchin helicopter landing site of Yelizovo airport in the direction of Severo-Kurilsk to test the preparation of local utilities for the coming winter. On one of them was a commission of the regional administration headed by the governor of the Sakhalin region, Igor Farkhutdinov. One board arrived at the destination at the appointed time. At 15.05 local time, the commander of the crew of the helicopter, on which Farkhutdinov was stationed, reported the safe passage of the “upper reaches of the Tolmachyova ” checkpoint, the helicopter was flying at an altitude of 1,350 meters at that time. The next control point was supposed to be Lake Kurilskoe , but after passing the first control point the helicopter crew did not get in touch anymore ^[5] . Further attempts to communicate with the passengers of the missing helicopter using the satellite telephone aboard, which Assistant Governor Yury Shuvalov took with him, were also unsuccessful. The search for the helicopter was complicated by the fact that it was missing an emergency transmitter of the COSPASS-SARSAT system, designed to detect vehicles in distress ^[6] .

Initially, two helicopters were sent to search for the missing Mi-8 from Severo-Kurilsk and Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky ^[7] , border ships were connected to the search, and they began to survey the water area of ​​the southern coast of Kamchatka. With the onset of darkness and due to deteriorating weather, the search work was postponed until morning.

At 00:55 local time, an Il-76 flew from Ramenskoye airfield near Moscow to Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, which at 10:10 local time delivered 39 rescuers from the Central Airmobile detachment of the Ministry of Emergency Situations and the Leader special risk center also two MBB Bo 105 helicopters and divers with the necessary equipment ^[8] . In the future, about 30 civilian vessels were involved in the search for the missing helicopter ^[9] .

The transport prosecutor's office of the Kamchatka Region was prosecuted for the disappearance of the helicopter under Part 1 of Art. 263 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation ^[10] . As part of the investigation, the verification of the legality of the charter documents of the airline, which owned the missing helicopter, documentation for registration, licensing, certification, clarification of the circumstances of the helicopter departure, crew readiness, technical suitability of the helicopter was started.

During the day of August 21, exploration works are concentrated on the southern tip of the Kamchatka Peninsula and in the area of ​​the small islands of the North Kuril Ridge adjacent to the Peninsula. The territory of the search operation was divided into seven sections with an area of ​​50 km² each, each of which tracked two helicopters with rescue teams ^[11] . The searches were unsuccessful, and at 21:30 local time, due to the onset of darkness and low cloudiness, the searches were again suspended until the morning, and later rescuers broke up 4 base camps to search for the helicopter ^[12] .

On August 22, 2003, there were reports of the discovery of burnt helicopter fragments ^[13] , but they were later not confirmed ^[14] . An oily stain was found in the Ozernaya River, but it was not possible to connect it with the missing helicopter. The authorities of the Sakhalin region have announced a reward to anyone who detects a helicopter ^[15] . The third day of the search was also unsuccessful.

On August 23, 2003 at about 5:40 pm local time, the wreckage of the Mi-8 helicopter was discovered from the air by a Kamchatka Airlines helicopter on the slope of the Opala volcano . The helicopter was found in a heavily destroyed form; no one was able to survive ^[16] .

In the Sakhalin region, a three-day mourning was announced from August 25 to August 27, in the Kamchatka Region, it was declared a mourning day on August 26 ^{[17] [18]} . Acting Governor was First Vice-Governor of the Sakhalin Region, Ivan Malakhov , who headed the commission created to organize and conduct the funeral of the dead members of the regional administration ^[19] .

To investigate the causes of the crash, a special state commission was created, headed by the Minister for Emergency Situations (at that time) Sergey Shoigu ^[20] .

On August 24, black boxes were found at the crash site, which were brought to Moscow on August 25. Also on August 25, Sergei Shoigu called the main cause of the crash a deviation from the approved flight route, reporting the exclusion of versions of equipment failure, terrorist attack and sabotage. On August 27, the decoding of the black boxes was completed; on the same day, rescuers completed work at the crash site. According to the results of the inspection carried out by the Ministry of Transport of the Russian Federation in connection with the air crash, the certificates were canceled by the operators of three Kamchatka airlines (including Halaktyrka, which owned the fallen helicopter, and Krechet, which owned the helicopter platform from which the helicopter departed) . In October 2003, the investigation was completed. According to the commission, moving at a speed of 200 km / h, the crew found a mountain slope in the breaks of cloudiness and attempted to prevent the helicopter from colliding with the ground with a sharp sharp take of the control stick "for itself". This step led to the fact that the helicopter went beyond the established restrictions on the pitch angle (more than 50 degrees), as a result of which the rotor blades collided with the tail boom, resulting in a complete loss of control. Uncontrollable helicopter, rotating at high speed in the air, crashed to the ground ^[1] .

Three days after the crash , Presidential Envoy to the Far Eastern Federal District Konstantin Pulikovsky spoke with the families of people aboard the missing helicopter. He noted the intensity of this meeting, calling on the media to distribute only reliable, verified information ^[21] .

As soon as information appeared on the discovery of the Mi-8, Vladimir Putin expressed condolences to the families and friends of those killed in the crash. In addition, Konstantin Pulikovsky, the mayor of Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, Fedor Sidorenko, Boris Tretyak , members of the administration of Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, the All-Russian Defense Committee of the Kurils, the City Assembly and the Sakhalin Oblast Duma, the Consul General of the USA Pamela Spratlen, and the Presidents of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko and Ukraine, and the President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko and Ukraine, brought their condolences. Kuchma ^{[21] [22]} .

The press repeatedly mentioned the similarity of the two helicopter crashes: the death of the governors of the Sakhalin Region Igor Farkhutdinov and the Krasnoyarsk Territory Alexander Lebed . Much attention was paid to the oddities of the tragedy in Kamchatka: the lack of a license for the transportation of representatives of state power, the deviation from the planned flight and the violation of air flight rules by Halaktyrka ^{[23] [24] [25] [26]} .

Emergencies Minister Sergei Shoigu on August 25, at a press conference in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk , confirmed the similarity of circumstances of the crashes of the Mi-8 helicopters with the governors on board and said that in his department they plan to come up with a legislative initiative to have satellite beacons on all aircraft ^{[ 24] [27]} .

On August 27, V. Putin, representatives of the Russian regions, the USA and Japan, arrived to participate in the mourning events in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk ^{[21] [28]} . After the funeral of the victims of the catastrophe, Putin held a meeting with the administration of Sakhalin, which began with a minute of silence and subsequently touched upon Igor Farhutdinov’s theme ^{[29] [30]}

This is a tragic event for each of us, and I do not doubt that for all the residents of Sakhalin. I personally knew Igor Pavlovich well for many years and say so not only because I met him regularly, but because in recent years I recognized him as a person who really lived on Sakhalin’s problems, the problems of the region. He was able to calmly, without unnecessary fuss, defend the interests of the Sakhalin region, did it very decently, systematically, professionally. And here he spent his whole working life after graduating from a higher educational institution and before this tragedy. Here he grew up, without any doubt, in a policy of the federal scale. He managed to form a workable team, a team that confidently held the management of such a complex region of Russia as Sakhalin in his hands. (...) recent indicators, indicators of the economic development of the region speak volumes, speak for themselves. This is a steady increase in the regional product lately, an increase in real wages, an improvement in the labor market situation ... This is an improvement in the demographic situation — in any case, the positive trends are obvious. (...) I must say that you have experienced the most difficult times. This is a great merit of Igor Pavlovich and his entire team.

For ordinary Sakhalin citizens, the death of the governor was a serious shock ^[31] .

In 2003, the name “Igor Farkhutdinov” was given to the vessel “Admiral Lazarev” .

In May 2004, the relatives of those killed in the plane crash appealed to the authorities of the Kamchatka Region with the initiative to build a monument at the site of the crash. In August of the same year, a monument was erected at the crash site ^[32] .

• Newspaper. Ru: Катастрофа Ми-8 с губернатором Сахалина
• Причиной катастрофы вертолета Ми-8 на Камчатке стало нарушение экипажем правил полета в горной местности // Сахалин. Info
• Распоряжение Минтранса от 18.11.2003 «О катастрофе вертолета Ми-8Т RA-25194»