Chelyabinsk - Voronezh - Kichinev

On August 11, 1979 at 01:35 PM, Chelyabinsk - Voronezh - Kichinev experienced a crash involving Tupolev TU-134, operated by Aeroflot - Russian International Airlines, with the event recorded near Kurilovka Dnipropetrovsk Oblast.

The flight was categorized as scheduled revenue flight and the reported phase was flight at a plain, valley crash site.

94 people were known to be on board, 94 fatalities were recorded, 0 survivors were identified or estimated. This corresponds to an estimated fatality rate of 100.0%.

Crew on board: 6, crew fatalities: 6, passengers on board: 88, passenger fatalities: 88, other fatalities: 0.

The listed crash cause is human factor. The airplane departed Voronezh Airport at 1254LT on the last leg of a flight from Chelyabinsk to Kishinev, Moldavia, carrying 88 passengers and a crew of six. At 1317LT, the airplane entered the Kharkiv ARTCC at an altitude of 8,400 meters. The crew requested several times the permission to climb to 9,600 meters but this was denied due to heavy traffic. Eight minutes later, a second Aeroflot Tupolev TU-134AK entered the same ARTCC at an altitude of 5,700 meters. Registered CCCP-65735, it was completing flight SU7880 from Tashkent to Minsk with an intermediate stop in Donetsk. On board were 77 passengers and a crew of seven, among them all staff from the Pakhtakor Tashkent Football Team who should play against the Dynamo Minsk Team in two days. The crew of the second TU-134 was first cleared to climb to 7,200 meters and later to 8,400 meters. The air traffic controller miscalculated the distance and timing between both aircraft. About 90 seconds later, at an altitude at 8,400 meters but on crossing airways, both airplanes collided at an angle of 95° from each other. The right wing of CCCP-65735 struck the cockpit of CCCP-65816. Both aircraft spiralled to the ground, partially disintegrated in the air and eventually crashed in fields located around the villages of Kurilovka, Nikolaevka and Elizavetovka, about 35 km northwest of Dnipropetrovsk. Debris were found on a large area and none of the 178 occupants survived the accident.

Aircraft reference details include registration CCCP-65816, MSN 4 35 22 10, year of manufacture 1974.

Geospatial coordinates for this crash are approximately 48.5798°, 34.6007°.