The pilot named the probable cause of the crash of an Il-76 cargo plane in Mali: “Commander’s error”

“The test pilot decided to show the “Afghan approach”, although there was no need for this”

Footage of the crash of an Il-76TD cargo plane, which crashed at Gao airport in eastern Mali on September 23, has appeared on the Internet. According to one version, the plane belonged to the Air Force of Mali. There were 12 people on board. We talked to civil aviation pilot Oleg Bashmakov about how events could have developed on board the airliner during landing.

“The landing was carried out with a significant flight, in my opinion, the commander simply killed the car and people,” says Oleg Bashmakov, who himself worked as a pilot in Africa for quite a long time. — A pilot I know was invited to fly on this board. It was a miracle he didn’t get there. According to my information, among the dead are Boris Grishchenko and Alexey Onishchenko. During the Soviet era, we worked together at the Latvian Civil Aviation Administration. As I was informed, the plane previously belonged to a private individual and was sold to Mali. A test pilot from Russia arrived on board as commander. He decided to show “Afghan Entry”, although there was no need for this. The strip there was just over 2000 meters. He sat down with a long flight, near the middle.

As Oleg Sergeevich says, it looks like the plane’s tires were bursting.

“Purely visually, the video footage shows something slamming in his front part. At first I thought that something like a projectile had hit me. But, apparently, he began to emergency brake. Because when the main wheels are braking, the anti-skid system prevents the tires from being torn off. And when you brake in an emergency, the anti-skid sensor no longer works. Hence the claps. At the end of the strip a dust cloud is already visible. Apparently, the plane jumped off the runway and walked along the ground. 4 engines were running. The pilot most likely used reverse, and at maximum reverse, he used the increased mode. This means that the temperature in the combustion chamber of the engines was high. And then – the impact, destruction and fire of the aircraft structure.

— A number of sources report that the tail of the plane was torn off by the impact, thanks to which one of the crew members, the flight operator, managed to survive.

“From a technical point of view, it is most likely that the one who was in the tail of the plane could have remained alive. Upon impact, the structure is crushed from the front to the back, the destruction occurs with smoothing.

It is not known whether there were fighters from the Wagner PMC on board the ship.

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