well you will be. bringing you the latest in science and technology from around the world. we've got the future covered. hello again and welcome to spotlight the interview on r.t.i. malbrunot and today we will hear a miraculous crash landing story. in september a russian tupolev one fifty four aircraft with failed flight control navigation radio communications systems made an emergency landing at in the bandon airstrip in the middle of the thai guy his crew managed to save all the seventy two passengers

on board president medvedev has all of the parlous as heroes of russia and decorated the other crew members with the order of courage today and spotlight they will tell us the dramatic story and details here are the captain of the aircraft crew and the navigator you get in there myself and sergei how long life. you going in the high school it has been flying the well known route between moscow and this mall town in russia for several years but during one flight an unexpected electricity supply failure put everyone aboard on the edge of survival the team guided by captain you being in by still managed what seemed impossible they landed the plane on an old saw that airfield. did give them a life as a navigator that i saw of the whole crew no surprise then that it was he who first spotted the abandoned strip lost in the taiga. the president decorated that scene

was data words the captain became russia and the navigator a member of the water. thanks so much for coming to our program and congratulations on your well deserved awards thank you. all your friends and relatives most of us. when you were landing that airplane did you feel really scared you're quite experienced people but nevertheless were you afraid. i was scared at one point only. scared but it felt as if something was missing you know russians. the moment the fuel low lights went on the countdown began. after that moment we were told we couldn't carry on the flight as we had intended earlier. on that moment we had to make an urgent decision so you were going to fly somewhere well let's go back to

feeling afraid i felt fear a couple of times but it got suppressed immediately. when an individual is busy doing things he's fear and yet suppressed i had of the kind of fear that constrains one's motions and limbs but that's not what we felt you just have to overcome it as we were busy piloting this fear was receding i felt really scared only once when we landed and ran into the forest but we'll get to that that's when i felt somewhat scared but not while still in the air. right here not accustomed to flying through the forest. events were unfolding as follows. it was taking place as usual at the altitude of ten thousand six hundred meters we made a trip from moscow to pull out of the and we were on. on our way back down the

chimneys nothing indicated what was going to happen so when men started bailing gradually at first we decided to descend to a certain altitude and to continue to fly as it was old cloudy or below the plane it was so our intention at first was to reach a cloudless area for better visibility audiences to determine our exact location and decide whether we should head for the nearest airport they wouldn't begin with but things changed when the fuel low light went on as a gay said so we realized we had only thirteen minutes left to do why. then would run out of fuel and angels would stop and that would be it so we had no other option but to get under the clouds so we can see terrain and start looking for a landing place. now let's take a look at how today's guests worked that miracle landing

a plane with failed flight control here's this report from spotlights. the tupolev airline there with eighty one people on board was on its way from russia's far east to moscow cruising at thirty thousand feet its electrical system failed the politic to do some quick thinking and find somewhere to land in the vastness of the russian wilderness as it descended there was no way to slow way down using brakes and nowhere look tricity to the flight controls added to that no radio to call for how near recklessly they saw an abandoned air felled with a concrete runway that had been used by how to cope just too short for a big airliner it was their only chance and they too could land in this town and the plane rolled off the end of the runway into the poorest cutting down trees as it slowed it finally came to this stop when the wind india book down in mars. none

of the seventy two passengers and nine crew members were hurt. what was the response of the pilot when the flight engineer reported that the equipment failed you said that it started failing gradually or didn't fail immediately because. this was before the flight engineer made his first report it was just you know that aircraft that light levels in the automatic mode the autopilot is going to and pilots monitor the process. so the first thing that happened was the autopilot turning off and andre and i so wished to manual control and then the flight engineer began reporting that equipment started failing because that's when everything began. did you realize what happened i think something went wrong with the battery that's according to the

commission. about it only when do you know now that yes we do could you tell us about it two other audience know what caused the entire electric system of an aircraft to fail according to preliminary conclusion of the state commission the airplanes first and second batteries experienced thermal runaway. viewers we need to mention that there are four batteries on a plane the first and second battery experienced a thermal runaway as for what it is. hasn't been mushed researched by science but all car owners know what boiled batteries on. whether that's when all of a sudden the batteries temperature jumps up and the battery goes out of order. in a car this process isn't dangerous it just stops operating and that's it. but when thermal runaway happens. plane it produces very dangerous

a crude fumes. to contact anyone on the ground when the plane ran out of so to say was there any way to get in touch with the ground. we had an emergency radio already fifty five was it working. so that the ground search service would locate us at a landing but if that's what it's intended for the user to contact the ground it works as a beacon only when it's on helicopters can take the bearings and locate it. could you use your cell phone calls from our cell phones immediately that wasn't ground but it didn't work in the air. one kilometer above ground. it wasn't to pick up a phone and make a call. cordingley you didn't have any communication with the airfield. they just saw you we had no communication period no channels but they saw you and realized

you were going to land we were the ones who saw and realized that we were go into one of their no ground services in that airport. was there the chief right there of course chief and he saw us and. let's go back to the thermal runaway issue just how likely are such things to occur. i've never heard about it happening so unexpectedly serious consequences does this mean it can happen again. yes it can happen once again let me stress that this process hasn't been properly researched thermal runaway can be gradual or sudden or wavelike which is related to temperature rise inside the battery. could you explain about this a few low lights. a lot of few fuel tanks so

the light went on but you knew you had to know if you look. well let me remind you that our rectifiers failed the first and second batteries failed. and because of their failure there wasn't enough power to enable fuel pumps to transfer fuel from wing tanks to the supply tank that feeds the engines. thus the pumps stopped and the supply tank pumps mechanically driven they only work when engines work. comparing to cars again you had gas in the carburetor only exactly and there wasn't much gas there either sygate tell something so your plane ran out of a city even though the engine was still running how did you steer then when all the wing flaps and so on are power operated or are there manual control rods as well.

i guess it could be possible but the thing is that angel. and plane was a bt and to manual control and steering at that point nothing really terrible was happening yet engines were running and the plane was under control even though there was no electricity and no radio control in numerous devices including. were out of order and when the fuel low light went on when we reached the cloud free area and spotted that concrete runway at that point we had to slow down by engaging wing flaps and slats. and that didn't happen neither in automatic nor in manual mode i mean you only could do was extend landing gear by means of the secondary mergence the hydraulic system the entire flight took place with clean wings and at high speeds and you landed with clean wings to exactly that's why it was so difficult that was quite a risky trick well we had no other options. you had tanks full

a few they were half fool actually say even he never said all of the captain of the . one fifty four which made a crash landing in the common public tender and navigators of that flight have a live in our studio spotlight will be back shortly after we take a break so stay with us we'll continue in less than a minute. this is a table from the u.s. embassy in colombo to talk about here an apparent june seventh incident of extrajudicial executions the military reported to the press that on that day that killed nine guerrillas in combat the best edition by instructs you including you know and their strongly suggest however that the nine were executed by the army and then dressed in military fatigues.

explain how you know this kind of phenomenon where bodies are dressed up as guerrillas and presented as killed in action and this and this idea that you need to produce bodies actually encouraged paramilitary collaboration this is a cia document central intelligence agency they knew about these activities they knew they were happening they knew about links to paramilitary groups and yet usaid continued to flow. more news today violence is once again flared up. these are the images the world has been seeing from the streets of canada. the giant corporations are today.

welcome back to the spotlight i'm just more into that my guests in the studio today are even. here are russia and the captain of the two believe one fifty four which made a crash landing in the common republican symptom or and also the flight navigator that all of that aircraft said of the how and who was awarded order coverage so. again my question is to you. he has explained several times that the emergency cropped up you managed to do through the clouds and were already able to find your bearings by sites. that there was no local so that you could navigate your plane

with them and by terrain sites i mean. there were many factors that helped us to land it was daytime not night there were no mountains. which we had just passed more than your roles. it was the distance between the lens and the lower cloud or the six hundred meters. or so after we pierce the clouds and started looking for a place to land. we again had luck and that was. seized. initially to run for that spirit because we didn't see any runways around. but as we began heading for it. oh i must add this. in our lending we were told by the locals that this has been used as a field as well. and even that was fortunate for us. so

as we headed for the spirit we sighted that village. and i suggest that the crew that we are somewhat to the right so that the villagers might see us and quickly call rescue services to help our passengers. but as the guys got to piloting the plane. i was turning my head left and right. only off chance that something else might turn out. and then i clearly saw a runway. the runway straight and even as a road. like a real highway. in the forest next to the village an amazing country it was the soviet union how many airfields built. the airfield chief had been looking after their own oil that time clear and that. incidentally do you know that. your hero of russia. says the same thing

he said in one of his interviews that the pilots would have been unable to save the passengers had it not been for that man who hadn't let anyone ruin that old runway he called him a real officer and a real patriot do you agree do you agree that he owes who deserves to be decorated yes in fact in essence all those years he performed his duty like you did although no one seemed to need him to do that but it came in handy. in fact i believe that it's he who is the real hero because he was quite free not to look up to that congress street at all because after in ninety nine the local stop flying their smaller craft like this and twenty four and yak forty helicopter pad was organized on that runway where medical helicopters touched down from time to time and that man saw it as a point of warning to maintain the runway in order he's

a real. he went on tending the runway he didn't. anyone use it for outside purposes now the mushroom hunters vehicles were allowed in nor any other heavy equipment business people that cut timber in that area for expert to china good money to be permitted to stockpile timbered on the runway and money yes but she declined the offer as you said this trip should stay free in case an aircraft game was needed again and so it was. the story of some glass of water that you used in order to better part of the plane we were talking about vehicles but personally i heard the glass of water tale in connection with the rolls royce when you buy a rolls royce you place a glass of water inside and drive the car to eighty mph. killed it means the assembly is good. it was pretty much the same with air craft.

there shouldn't be any spilled water. in fact the glass of water was still standing when they landed. in fact years ago as the water. in fact we could show if we had a full glass of water. you have a level surface and you put a glass of water on it the water spills out when you tilt the plane to one side or another water in the glass to as well so used to find the horizon. we use that as a horizon indicator as we were piercing clouds not landing. let me explain something people in journalists asked many questions and i do like to explain it once again no one landed the plane with the help of that glass of water we didn't look at it while we were in the end it all began as we started climbing down the flight engineer put down that glass and it came to my head how forceful it was of him to offer a drink of water to the crew but then i recalled that it was an old trick from an

era when i had no horizon indicators. if you were in the clouds a glass of water was used in order to prevent your craft from turning over in the air and to keep it on an even kneel. but none of us really looked at the glass because the laws of physics are different and so on big is flying at high speeds. you mean centrifugal force is an operation yes the only thing as again use that is that an indicator of a soft and successful landing was the fact that the water was still firmly in his receptacle as the plane touched down on that runway and after it stopped so how many attempts did it take you to land the plane used for attempts circling on purpose in order to better see where you were going to land or was it because your first attempts failed actually as i said the mechanisms were not working and the speed was high. school this type of plane cannot land at such

a high speed. but how much did it exceed the speed needed for landing by a hundred was your landing speed two hundred seventy kilometers per hour and what was your landing speed at that moment four hundred and later three hundred eighty this is why it was a visual flight and a visual maneuver during our first and second attempts we just failed to fit in into the runway alignment during the third attempt we decided would fly over the runway and see whether it was free. com pass it was still operational and we marked a tentative landing course which we saw on the strip was clear and braced up for the touchdown on the fourth attempt was a success. tell me can you say you were lucky to be flying that specific model t. you one five four is there anything about his design that helped you land it successfully i'd like to say once again that this particular plane saved lives.

this specific plane yes precisely this model it's very reliable though obsolete. how old is it. planned stop turning out these i crafts as late as two thousand and eight yes it's an obsolete model but it's some thirty years old isn't it yes its first regular flight took place in seventy two forty years yeah forty years is just obsolete it has three engines it consumes more fuel than foreign made aircraft but the plane is highly reliable situations like the one with a stick of very really nothing like this is going to happen anymore but it has some very sturdy chefs is nothing in the running gear broke no nothing in a landing gear broke. no nothing broke as we plough through the woods it's a reliable plane and if you act with determination it follows your orders very well . i'd like you to comment on the latest tragic air accident involving a polish plane that crashed near smolensk surely you've heard about it and read

a lot about it. what prevented the crew from making a safe landing at that time. it seems to me the crew was nervous because the entire government and the country's president were on board the plane. what they should have done was to avoid landing on that particular airfield. so you should have diverted they should have taken the risk that it to land on a reserve airfield and save lives very interesting all the mechanisms were operative the plane had been checked tested time and again by contrast none of your back and has since were functioning good visibility while they were in the fog were there flight conditions worse than yours even with the functioning instruments sure they had fungal around but the instruments were in good order but they shouldn't

have made any landing attempts just to be the instructions they'd say issued hand for reserve and. you know one mean is to land a plane with the electric system being out of order in conditions of clear visibility is easier than. an operating plane in thick fog it depends on how you understand it. better to find a reserve airfield. right there are standards of weather requirements and crew preparation which a crew on a particular working plane in think fog got killed and killed the passengers. no matter what advances of technology maybe they can replace a q nine hands yes and in this case it means that the plane was deanna judged all of the equipment was out of order but all the same the crew landed the plane successfully let's make another comparison as a well known story to last year they landed a plane on the hudson river which situation was more complicated there's are yours

what do you think we were not there i can say what's your idea about it was better water or forests i think both situations are very complicated i had my award the captain did there i think he's a great professional. it's hard to land on the water surface because in case of a swing the plane will break into pieces what they show some of the wings will be torn off but he had all the equipment working fine landed calmly. by the engines did not work. the landing was successful and on the job my last question is will your plane fly again i think that it should flaw it will you fly again on it. you're not superstitious no thank you so much good luck thank you for participation thank you thank you very much for being with us and just to remind my guest today to put myself out here of russia and captain how to

pull of one fifty four which made it crash landing in the common republic and also the flight data. all the same crew sygate tell a lie bill was awarded an order. and that's it for now for all of us here and we'll be back with more for stan comments on once going on in and outside russia time so then they can party and take it personally.

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