So these are plane crashes from around the world, but it's only for the countries that had a true crime case, if you don't see a plane crash in here, check my True crime from around the world book.
Warning, this book contains plane crashes and the a...
This plane crash takes us to the European country of Croatia, which is located next to the following countries: Slovenia, Hungary, Serbia, Montenegro and Bosnia and Herzegovina.
WARNINGS OF A PLANE CRASH
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Pictured above is a similar type of aircraft that was involved in this crash.
Aviogenex Flight 130 was an international charter passenger flight from Gatwick Airport (IATA: LGW, ICAO: EGKK), London to Rijeka Airport (IATA: RJK, ICAO: LDRI), Yugoslavia (modern-day Croatia). On the 23rd of May 1971, the Tupolev Tu-134A servicing the flight suffered structural failure during landing. The aircraft flipped over and caught fire, killing 78 out of 83 people. There were 5 survivors. The crash became the first fatal accident of the Tupolev Tu-134 since the aircraft entered service.
British authorities assisted in the investigation led by the Yugoslavian Directorate General of Civil Aeronautics. The investigation found that the crew might have suffered an optical illusion due to heavy showers and the dusk that could have led the crew to believe that the runway was closer and lower than it actually was. In response to the illusion, the crew executed an overly steep and fast descent in the last phase of the final approach, causing a hard touchdown and breakage of the right wing.
The Tupolev Tu-134 is a twin-engined, narrow-body jet airliner built in the Soviet Union from 1966 to 1989. In 1968, Tupolev began work on an improved 72-seat Tu-134 variant. The fuselage received a 2.1 m (6.9 ft) plug for greater passenger capacity and an auxiliary power unit in the tail. As a result, the maximum range was reduced from 3,100 km (1,900 mi) km to 2,770 km (1,720 mi). The upgraded D-30 engines now featured thrust reversers, replacing the parachute. The first Tu-134A flew on the 22nd of April 1969 and the first airline flight was on the 9th of November 1970. The aircraft servicing Aviogenex Flight 130 bore serial number 1351205 and was registered as YU-AHZ (Yankee Uniform- Alpha Hotel Zulu). It had accumulated a total of only 111 airframe hours at the time of the crash. The plane was imported into Yugoslavia on the 23rd of April 1971, and an airworthiness certificate was issued on the 27th of April.
There were 76 passengers and seven crew members aboard Flight 130. The flight was transporting British tourists travelling on holiday to Rijeka, the third-largest city in SR Croatia. Seventy-two passengers were British tourists, while the other 11 passengers and crew (7 crew and 4 passengers) were from Yugoslavia.
The captain and pilot flying was 41-year-old Miloš Markićević. He held an IFR rating and had 9,230 flight hours, 138 of which were on the Tupolev Tu-134A. The copilot and pilot monitoring was 34-year-old Stevan Mandić, who had 2,300 flight hours, with 899 hours in type. A trainee, Viktor Tomić, had 99 flight hours. He was supervised by 39-year-old flight engineer Ivan Čavajda, who had accumulated 7,500 flight hours, of which 1,373 were on the Tu-134.
The aircraft took off from Gatwick at 16:33pm GMT, flight code JJ 130. The flight was uneventful despite poor weather conditions over Europe until the final approach to Rijeka Airport. After establishing communication with Rijeka ATC, the controller on duty passed meteorological info to the crew and warned them about cumulonimbus clouds above the Učka mountain range. Using their airborne radar, the crew managed to fly around the cumulonimbus, but were too high to catch the instrument landing system (ILS) glide slope. The aircraft flew over the airport, returned to Breza non-directional beacon (BZ NDB) and caught the ILS glide path and localizer normally. The crew followed the ILS glide path with a slightly increased speed. At 4 km (2.5 mi) from the RWY14 threshold (THR 14), at an altitude of 300 m (980 ft) above the sea level, the aircraft entered torrential rain under cumulonimbus clouds. The clouds, with their base at 600 m (2,000 ft), were above the northwest part of the airport and extending towards Rijeka for several kilometres from THR 14.
