Engine failure on one of the aircraft's three engines (297 words)

Published: 7/18/2001

A Tu-154M belonging to Aeroflot on a scheduled flight from Kathmandu to Moscow with 76 passengers and 10 crew on board has made an emergency at Moscow's Sheremetyevo Airport. According to reports, one of the aircraft's three D-30KU-154-11 turbofans was reported to have failed by the aircraft's safety systems and was shut down when the aircraft was passing over Baku in Azerbaijan, leading to the need for an emergency landing in Moscow. The landing was however, without event and the aircraft landed safely. A commission has already started to examine both the engine and the systems that signalled the failure. This latest incident appears to add to the gathering evidence against the Tu-154 culminating with the recent crash of the Vladivostok Avia aircraft, although reports suggest that the cause was most probably due to pilot error. Other incidents this year include a Tu-154 belonging to Tyumenaviatrans en route from Surgut-Moscow on the 12th of March 2001, made an emergency landing at Surgut Airport after the crew failed to retract the aircraft's landing gear after take off. In January 2001, two of Sibir's Tu-154 made emergency landings due to problems with landing gear in the space of a week. Given however, that the Sibir aircraft were operating in extreme temperatures, the cause may have been freezing hydraulic fluids rather than mechanical failure. In part the concern about the Tu-154 is somewhat over done given that it constitutes the bulk of the aircraft operating on medium haul routes in Russia and the CIS and has a commensurate share of problems. It is also true that Russia's increased transparency on such events has led, according Alexander Neradko, the head of GSGA, to a greater awareness of incidents that suggests the problems did not exist before, which they undoubtedly did, but were simply not reported.

Article ID: 2653