Geister

It was the god damn 90s with the permanently dipsy president, and the nouveau riches, like Khodorkovski, Berezovski etc. who robbed the country and plundered its resources selling it to the West for their personal sake. Salaries were not paid over months, raped social system, inflation like in Zimbabwe, all state institutes were under-financed. Research firms were not an exception. Taskaev says about this accident: "It happened because we did not have money to check the plane on the diagnostic tester. That time all our thoughts were where to find additional 3 tons of fuel for the next flight." Check this interview of Anatoli Kvochur. This interview was taken in 1996 and this few words describe that situation very picturesque:

Ok, I betray a secret. :smilewink: I know the reason of this accident from other Russian sources. It was a manufacturing defect. No ice, no human factor, no external factors whatsoever.

Do you really expect that he had dropped from 15000 to 6000 ft in a blink of an eye? :) In adriatic it happened to you because of high content of vapor in the air. But in the continental climate, above the inversion, staying away from any clouds, you'll never have ice even in the negative temperature. To have ice-building under -20°C you have to have really lot's of moisture in the air (clouds), because the big part of waterparts are ice-crystals already. What seconds on the video does he say it?

The temperature gradient is about 1 degree/300ft. The usual temperature in the Moscow region in August is ca.30 degree Celsius. He was only on 8000 ft altitude and ABOVE the clouds. The clouds are Sc, most likely because of the inversion on 4000 ft. It means that the air above the clouds is extremely dry. We can see that the visibility is 9999, maybe 30-50 miles. Even under the negative temperature the ice-building would be a miracle in such dry air. The temperature on the clouds level is about +15C. So, what kind of ice and deicing we can talk about?

The footage is incomplete, but it was shortened in the right sequence. He said that he wanted to eject in advance. (He says it several times, just to let the tower know what he was up to). He did not want to eject right away after he said so. And later he changed his mind and decided to land. P.S. Roman Taskaev is a test-pilot of YAK-130 too. In 2006 he had to eject it with a co-pilot. Here you can see him talking about YAK-130 (starting at 03:42): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ITc9E5Vj2wU