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This is the story of Utair flight 120. On the first of april Utair flight 119 was flying from Surgut to tyumen at 11: 41 pm local time. Both cities are in russia and so it was very cold. When the plane landed at tyumen it was just .2 degrees celsius over freezing. Thats 32 degrees farenheight for the yanks out there. There was a cyclonic system nearby and that brought tons of rain and wet heavy snow. Ironic that a warm cyclonic front would actually cool things down in the long run.
The night was filled with rain and snow and gusts of winds, not a very pleasant night if you ask me. But the crew were warm and snug in a hotel nearby and thats where they stayed till 5:30 am. After that they had to start preparing the plane for flight 120, all the way back to surgut. At tyumen the flight crew went through a weather briefing as part of their pre-flight prep. The weather was cold but it wasnt so cold or so rainy that it posed a threat to the safety of the flight so they saw no reason to cancel the flight.
The captain then walked around the plane performing the pre flight inspection and the first officer was busy preparing the flight plan. With all of the preflight prep the crew started the engines. Taxiing was normal and the ATR 72 lined up with the runway. The pilots saw no reason to cancel the takeoff and so they started the takeoff roll. Flight 120 started to climb as the plane passed through 600 feet the pilots engaged the autopilot and by the time they were at 640 feet they started to retract the flaps. As they climbed to 690 feet the plane began to do something that the pilots did not expect, it began to bank to the right. They quickly disengaged the autopilot but they couldnt regain control of their plane. The bank to the right worsened with each passing second, the pilots countered it with rudder and aileron inputs. But now they had the opposite problem the ATR was now banking dangerously to the left, they tried to compensate again with ailerons and rudder inputs but this time they were fighting the losing battle. The pilots could not recover and the plane went into a dive. The plane slammed into the ground near the village of gorkovka. There wasnt much left of the plane but of the 43 people on board 10 people survived the crash.
With the plane all but destroyed the investigators had their work cut out for them, but they had access to a lot of information to solve this crash. Since the plane had taken off from quite a big airport most of what the plane did was caught on CCTVs they even recorded the takeoff. SP even before they had access to the CVR and FDR data they had quite a bit of information to go through. They could see all that the pilots did before the takeoff and how the plane took off. What the investigators were looking for was to see if the pilots adhered to the clean aircraft concept. No they weren't checking to see if the aircraft was free from dirt and stuff but from other contaminants like ice slush and snow. Even a bit of ice can be incredibly detrimental to an aircrafts performance as the ice changes the shape of the wing robbing the wing of its ability to generate lift. This is why deicing is so important, it removes ice and slush on the wing and other control surfaces way before the plane even takes off.
Usually deicing is performed by trained ground personnel but the captain of the plane is the person whos ultimately responsible. He or she must make sure that the plane is free from ice and slush before takeoff. If the conditions warrant it, the pilot can request multiple deicing sessions. In some airports pilots often have a quick deice before the plane lines up with the runway to minimise the risk posed by ice.
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