General Popov allowed the destruction of the “black boxes” of the fallen Prigozhin plane

Flight recorders may have been placed incorrectly on the business jet

The “black boxes” of Yevgeny Prigozhin’s plane that crashed in the Tver region have not yet been found. The wreckage scattered for several kilometers, searches are underway. Can the discovery of recorders help the investigation, said the former head of the Federal Agency for Aviation and Space Search and Rescue, Honored Pilot of the Russian Federation, Major General Vladimir Popov.

The placement of automatic flight information recorders, the so-called “black boxes” on board business jets, is not regulated, their installation is determined by the decision of the aircraft owners, the expert says.

“According to our rules, it is mandatory to install instrumentation and recording equipment on aircraft, regardless of the size of the aircraft and its capacity,” said General Popov. – But for imported aircraft, and Embraer is a Brazilian company, ICAO rules apply – the International Civil Aviation Organization. I understand that the plane came to us a long time ago, before the announcement of sanctions.

I think that it has certain equipment for recording flight information. This is either an American system of flight recorders, or ours, domestic. The only question is what condition it is in, as well as where and how it was attached.

On large aircraft there are standard attachment points. But on business jets, as a rule, there are no such regular places for installing “black boxes”. They are determined by the additional permission of the design bureau of Western countries. KB indicate the place where it is more convenient to place the equipment. And in this case, it may end up in a not very safe location for their safety.

We put our means of objective control, roughly speaking, in the area of ​​​​the tail section of the aircraft, in the area of ​​\u200b\u200bthe keel. Because these structural elements, as a rule, remain intact during a disaster. That’s the statistics. Broken engines, fuselage, cockpit. We know it.

In the case of Prigozhin’s plane, there is a video where you can see how the plane fell, then burned on the ground. If the box was not installed in the most optimal place for its safety, then it could burn out.

– Are there any requirements for the “black box” in terms of its safety in extreme conditions?

– Both according to our rules and according to ICAO rules, the “black box” must withstand an overload of 30 units or more, a temperature of 800-1000 degrees for, say, one and a half to two minutes. He should not lose information for up to ten days in salt water at great depths.

But one thing is the standard requirements, and another thing is how they are implemented. I will give an example: when our Su-24 was shot down in Syria and the pilot Peshkov died, during the investigation it turned out that the new on-board objective control device did not pass the test, and the “black box” collapsed very badly.

The owner of a business jet can make a decision about the “black box” at his discretion. It is one thing when government agencies monitor the state of flight recorders, there are GOSTs, so to speak, and another thing is a private trader who is guided by technical conditions.

Read the material:Before the crash of Prigozhin’s plane, strangers got on board“.