Aeroflot Flight 721
plane crash
Aeroflot Flight 721 was a scheduled domestic passenger flight between Moscow and Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk in the Russian SFSR. On Wednesday, 2 September 1964, the aircraft flying this route, an Ilyushin Il-18V, crashed into the side of a hill on approach to Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, killing 87 of the 93 people on board. At the time of the accident, it was the deadliest Il-18 crash and the deadliest aviation accident on Russian soil.
Aircraft
The aircraft involved in the accident was an Ilyushin Il-18V turboprop airliner registered CCCP-75531 to the Krasnoyarsk Civil Aviation Directorate of Aeroflot. At the time of the accident, it had only been in service for about a year and had logged merely 1,269 total flight hours and 358 pressurization cycles.
Crew
Nine crew members were aboard the flight. The cockpit crew consisted of:
Captain Anatoly Andrevich Smirnov
Co-pilot Boris G. Stepanov
Navigator Anatoly Davydovich Gilinsky
Navigator-in-training Ivan Vasilievich Ivanov
Flight engineer Arkady Kalayda
Radio operator Yevgeny Petrovich Ipatov
Flight attendants Anastasia Tsebak, Lyubov Orekhova, and Nikolay Filatov worked in the cabin. All nine crew members perished in the crash.
Synopsis
Flight 721's route led it eastward across Russia from Moscow to Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, with stopovers in Khabarovsk and Krasnoyarsk. The flight changed crews at Krasnoyarsk airport and proceeded with the flight to Khabarovsk without incident.
At 20:00 the flight departed Khabarovsk en route to the final destination, Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, carrying 84 passengers, including 17 children.
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