Close Call For Russian Cargo Plane

avweb.com ^ | August 5, 2007 | By Russ Niles, Contributing Editor

[JohnA]

It was a testament to the ruggedness of the IL-76, but we’ll let others decide what it says about the crew flying it. According to a Transport Canada incident report published by Canadian Defence and Geopolitics, the Silk Way Airways plane was headed for Canadian Forces Base in Trenton, Ontario, in early June when it encountered poor visibility (half mile in fog, vertical visibility 500 feet, RVR 600, temperature and dew point 12 degrees Celsius) at the military base. The crew elected to try an instrument approach. The massive plane, loaded with military hardware from the Canadian Forces operation in Afghanistan, hit a perimeter fence, taking out 150 feet of it, touched down briefly 430 feet short of the runway and then managed to climb out, trailing part of the fence from its landing gear and peppered with damage to its belly. However, that wasn’t enough to prompt the crew to declare an emergency.

[Texas Eagle]

I heard Rush Limbaugh ask a pilot who called in after some sort of aircraft crash, "What do pilots think when they are flying a plane that they know is going to crash?" The pilot said, "We are trained to fly as far into the crash as possible."

Rush got a chuckle at this response but this incident bears witness to what that pilot said.

[Sundog]

Somebody register and give us the rest of the story, Please.

[Travis McGee]

Aeroping.

[martin_fierro]

[PAR35]

Somebody register and give us the rest of the story, Please.

First time Bugmenot has let me down. Neither login worked.

[JohnA]

I registered but I don't feel like spilling the beans if they want their site that way. Here's part of it:

The IL-76 landed uneventfully and went directly to an FBO. There, with help from the emergency workers, the crew untangled the barbed wire and took off again for Trenton, where the cargo was unloaded. In Trenton, it was revealed the aircraft had "substantial damage" and the events were classified by the Transportation Safety Board as an accident rather than an incident.

In other IL-76 (waterbomber) news

Meanwhile, in US Forest Service news:

[JohnA]

The US Forest Service would lump this incident in with design flaw implications in citing the incident record of the IL-76 as they did in one high-level letter I read from them.

I mean, who's fooling whom here?

[FreedomCalls]

More info (and the rest of the story quoted above) here:

http://www.pprune.org/forums/showthread.php?s=41290d9615e49d626b323095e247197d&t=286919

[JohnA]

Unauthorized reprint

[JohnA]

One blogger there has it wrong.

I spoke informally with a Canadian Armed Forces aircraft mechanic who was given the cook's tour of the IL-76 while serving in Bosnia where the Russians played a role. He and his Canadian Armed Forces mechanic buddies loved the thing. Everything BIG and easily reachable with ordinary tools and tough as nails. He had nothing but good to say about the entire aircraft.

[Sundog]

No need to spill beans, but I’m most impressed with the Russian engineering.

[Sundog]

Thanks.

Probably a fence post put the hole in the landing gear cover.

[JohnA]

I flew on the IL-96 but never the IL-76. The Russians wouldn’t let me but they took an Australian news crew on the waterbomber when I asked them to. No good film from that. Couldn’t see a thing for the fog. Cameraman was white as a sheet on landing.

[JohnA]

a large (Montana) wildfire threatening about 1,500 homes

[JohnA]

What's New: Forest fires - 2007 is worst July on record (Europe - a report from Jerusalem Post.

[par4]

The crew elected to try an instrument approach,

Let's see, we're so far below VFR that "electing" to try an instrument approach isn't really an option, the crew made (and screwed up) an instrument approach. For them to hit the perimeter fence, they had to be way below the glide slope.

They were obviously not competent to fly into those conditions, or their instruments weren't functioning right. Regardless, most any other airplane would be a jigsaw puzzle strewn across the field.

[AlaskaErik]

I got to tour one in Uganda during the 1994 Rwanda famine relief. As a C-130 loadmaster I was most impressed with the overhead crane in the cargo compartment.