Ukrainian fighter jet crashes during airshow killing 83 (08/04/02)

Ukrainian fighter jet crashes during airshow killing 83

by Roman Woronowycz
Kyiv Press Bureau

KYIV - It is being referred to as Black Saturday and the worst air show tragedy ever. With condolences continuing to pour in from around the world, Lviv buried 74 of the identified from the 83 victims who perished after a Sukhoi-27 jet aircraft crashed into a sea of onlookers at an air show on July 27. Twenty-six of the dead were 18 years of age or less. Another 116 people were hospitalized with various injuries, three remain critical and 21 in serious condition. Workers have not been able to identify nine of the bodies.

Three days after the catastrophe at Sknyliv Aerodrome on the outskirts of Lviv, with four high-ranking generals already fired and under arrest for criminal negligence and the minister of defense having offered his resignation, Ukraine was still in mourning and still trying to figure out what went wrong, most importantly, why the aircraft had not performed their acrobatic feats away from the crowd of spectators.

The event, a commemoration of the 60th anniversary of the formation of the Air Force Division in Lviv, began as a family affair, held in a picnic-like atmosphere under a bright blue sky on a hot summer day. Some 8,000 Lviv residents and their guests had turned out to watch as the aces of Ukraine's Air Force entertained them.

But a stunt, which state officials said was flawed from the start, went catastrophically awry. The Soviet-era jet fighter, performing in tandem with a similar aircraft, failed to pull upward from a vertical plunge to the ground and clipped trees and the ground with its wing, before touching the cone of a grounded plane and tumbling directly into the sea of humanity as it burst into a roaring ball of fire.

The pilot - a member of the elite Sokil acrobatic team - and his co-pilot, both ejected out of the cockpit before the plane hit the ground. They were subsequently hospitalized with spinal injuries after initially walking away from the scene. The two pilots are also under arrest on charges of criminal negligence.

Sharp fragments and ignited jet fuel, which sprayed out into the crowd as the aircraft impacted, left a trail of charred and dismembered body parts of entire families who only seconds before had been gazing up at the sky in awe of the dazzling acrobatics. Fourteen of the 83 dead came from four families. Thirty-six of the victims succumbed along with a sibling or parent.

At least one child, Yuri Motuziuk, was left an orphan, alive and alone on the airport tarmac, covered in ash and soot and crying after the debris and the jet fuel fireball killed his parents, an image carried by television around the world. Petro Mykhailiv lost his son, Andrii, 32, his stepdaughter, Natalia, 31, and two granddaughters, Andrianna and Natalya, aged 6 and 8. The elder Mykhailiv had a heart attack at the morgue while identifying their remains. Bohdan Onyshchak lost his 11-month-old granddaughter, Yaryna, her father, 25 year-old Oleh and another son, Yurii, 23.

Somber Ukrainian leaders, including President Leonid Kuchma, Verkhovna Rada Chairman Volodymyr Lytvyn and Minister of Defense Volodymyr Shkidchenko immediately flew to Lviv. President Kuchma called the event "an awful tragedy," before viewing the scene of the crash and visiting survivors at several hospitals and relatives of the dead at the city's morgue.

"There are no words, it is like a bad dream," said Mr. Kuchma.

Mr. Kuchma while still in Lviv announced that he had fired Chief of the General Staff Gen. Petro Shulyak, who was acting minister of defense at the time, and Air Force Commander-in-Chief Col. Gen. Viktor Strelnykov. Meanwhile, Minister of Defense Shkidchenko dismissed Lt. Gen. Serhii Onyshchenko, the commander of the 14th Air Corps to which the two pilots belonged and two 14th Air Corps assistant commanders, before offering his own resignation to President Kuchma. As of July 31, the president had not yet accepted the minister's offer to resign.

The Procurator General's Office announced on July 29 that it had arrested the four high-ranking officers and the two pilots. At a press conference in Kyiv Procurator General Sviatoslav Piskun said the Air Force leadership was liable for criminal military negligence for drawing up and approving an improper flight plan for the aircraft, as were the pilots, Volodymyr Toponar and Yuri Yehorov, for carelessness in carrying out their routines.

"According to the law and normal cock-pit procedures [aerial acrobatics] cannot be performed above a crowd," explained Mr. Piskun, who also questioned why the pilot made a straight vertical descent to merely 200 meters above the ground, before finally attempting to take his aircraft back up in a failed move that led to the crash.

Mr. Piskun, who said the investigations would be completed within two months, added that his procurators had identified additional violations of laws and procedures in regards to how the show was arranged and the flights carried out.

Nonetheless, some witnesses at the site suggested that engine trouble could have caused the tragedy. They said the roar of the jet's engines had gone silent as the aircraft descended, according to television news accounts. Some experts have even speculated that a bird may have blocked a jet engine causing a tragic stall.

Mr. Kuchma named Yevhen Marchuk, secretary of the National Security and Defense Council, to head a special investigative commission to determine the causes for the extensive loss of human life.

Mr. Marchuk, who traveled to Lviv with the other state leaders, told Studio 1+1 Television News there that he would examine at least seven possible scenarios to determine whether pilot error or technical problems had caused the crash, including engine failure, control system malfunction, fuel system problems, hydraulic problems and cockpit equipment failure. He also said that all the various possibilities that could exist were still under consideration, including terrorism.

Mr. Marchuk said he was also interested in why the aircraft that crashed veered from its established flight trajectory, which he said could have been a simple but tragic miscommunication with the pilot of the other aircraft. He also said he wanted to know why no general rehearsal took place.

"There were several things the pilots should have done, according to procedures, which they did not," explained Mr. Marchuk. A bit later, he added: "It is clear that this tragedy could have been avoided."

Investigators retrieved thousands of aircraft remains in the two days following the disaster, with which they were to reconstruct the jet in a search for clues as to the cause of the crash. Officials also said they found the black box intact with its voice and instrument recordings of the aircraft's last seconds aloft.

President Kuchma immediately cancelled Russian Black Sea Fleet Day celebrations in Sevastopol, which were scheduled for July 27, and called for a national day of mourning on July 29. He also banned all future shows displaying military hardware and cancelled all non-essential military flights.

A church service was held at Sknyliv on July 28, with priests of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church leading hundreds of mourners and survivors in prayer.

Meanwhile, Lviv officials announced three days of mourning beginning July 29 as the city began to bury its dead. The Ukrainian central government and the city of Lviv agreed to cover the cost of burial services and plots for the victims. The Ukrainian government announced it would compensate the relatives of the deceased from a fund of 10 million hrv.

Humanitarian aid from around the world quickly made its way to Ukraine. An aircraft filled with 1.6 tons of artificial respiration devices and medicines, escorted by two doctors, arrived from Spain the morning of July 29. France's ambassador, Phillipe de Suremain told Kyiv officials his country was ready to help in any way possible. By July 30, 2.5 million hrv of relief aid had been received from various non-governmental organizations, corporations and individuals, from home and abroad, reported Interfax-Ukraine.

President Kuchma received condolences on behalf of relatives of the victims from all the major Western countries, as well as from Poland, Russia and Ukraine's other immediate neighbors. Also sending condolences were Morocco, Syria and the Vatican. In addition, almost all of the diplomatic missions in Kyiv sent messages of sympathy, according to Interfax-Ukraine.

The Sknyliv tragedy is now considered the greatest air show disaster ever, giving Ukraine another dubious distinction. The number of fatalities at Sknyliv exceeds the 70 deaths that occurred during a similar tragedy at the U.S. Air Force Base in Ramstein, Germany, in 1988. At Ramstein, 70 people lost their lives and some 400 were injured while watching an air show when two Italian military jets collided in mid-air and crashed into a crowd of spectators.

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