On October 4 of this year, a regular meeting of the Runway Aviation Enthusiasts Club was held in the Pink Living Room of the Zhukovsky Recreation Center. It was dedicated to the life and death of Alexander Georgievich Beschastnov, a Hero of Russia, a test pilot at the M. M. Gromov Flight Research Institute.
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| Alexander Georgievich Beschastnov, a test pilot at the M. M. Gromov Flight Research Institute. |
| Source: Valery Ageev |
While working at the M.M. Gromov Flight Research Institute, he conducted a large number of fighter test flights, miraculously escaped an airplane collision in July 1993, performed the most difficult flights in the stratosphere on the M-55 Geophysics aircraft and died in a test flight 25 years ago – on September 12, 2001.
Rare newsreel footage featuring A.G. Beschastnov was shown at the meeting, and Alexander Georgievich's friends and colleagues shared their memories of him.
The meeting was led by Andrei Simonov, a historian of aviation and cosmonautics.
Jump out from under the coffin lid
That sunny July day in 1993 at the Royal International Air Tattoo (RIAT) at the RAF Fairford Air Force Base did not foreshadow any tragedy. A pair of MiG-29 fighter jets, piloted by Russian test pilots Sergei Tresvyatsky and Alexander Beschastnov, performed demonstration flights at the airshow dedicated to the 75th anniversary of the Royal Air Force.
At the end of the flight, the pilots began to perform a double loop, but they did not calculate the approach point in its lower part, and Tresvyatsky's plane hit the wing on the rear fuselage of Beschastnov's fighter. After that, Tresvyatsky's plane lost the wing console, and Beschastnov's fighter broke into two parts and caught fire.
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Tresvyatsky managed to assess that his plane, which had lost control, was falling outside the airfield, and only then ejected. Beschastnov had no choice but to leave the badly damaged cockpit of the fighter 3 seconds after the collision.
His burning MiG-29 crashed into the airfield, but fortunately, only one person on the ground suffered minor injuries. The Belgian C-130, the Italian Air Force G222 aircraft and the French Air Force Alpha Jet also suffered minor damage.
Both pilots were also unharmed, but the BBC announcer who watched the flight said that the pilots "jumped out from under the lid of the coffin." They were discharged from the hospital two days later. They were found guilty of the crash and then were not allowed to fly for a long time. But here's what Honored Test pilot of the Russian Federation, Hero of Russia Alexander Garnaev thought about this flight incident.:
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| Alexander Garnaev. |
| Source: Valery Ageev |
The bitter story of "Gzheli"
The M-101T Gzhel is a short-range turboprop passenger aircraft developed at the Myasishchev Design Bureau from 1989 to 2002. It was intended for business aviation and use as an air taxi. It was produced at the Nizhny Novgorod Aircraft Manufacturing plant "Sokol". On the one hand, it was an aircraft with good maneuverability and good handling, and on the other, it presented unpleasant surprises during testing, like any experimental aircraft.
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| M-101T "Gzhel". |
| Source: Valery Ageev |
During the certification factory tests of the M-101 on September 12, 2001, the crew consisting of commander O. A. Shchepetkov and co-pilot A. G. Beschastnov performed another test flight from the Ramenskoye airfield. According to the flight task, the pilots had to accelerate the aircraft to the estimated dive speed.
Having reached an altitude of about 3 kilometers, the crew began to descend with simultaneous acceleration. Upon reaching a speed of 435 km/h and an altitude of 2.2 kilometers, both surfaces of the elevator broke off as a result of the flutter. The plane, out of control in pitch, began to lose altitude, and the crew decided to abandon the emergency vehicle.
According to the standard technology of emergency exit through one (left) door of the cockpit, Commander Shchepetkov was the first to leave the aircraft to free the passage to the co-pilot.
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| Meeting of the Club of aviation enthusiasts "Runway". |
| Source: Valery Ageev |
Beschastnov was supposed to jump next, but presumably at the last moment he noticed that the uncontrolled plane could crash into the village of Petrovskoye, so he continued trying to control the plane to move away from the village and tried to land the almost uncontrollable car.
The plane crash-landed eight kilometers from the departure airfield, rescuers evacuated the still-alive pilot from the crash site, but he died from multiple injuries in the helicopter on the way to the hospital.
By decree of the President of the Russian Federation, Beschastnov was awarded the title Hero of the Russian Federation (posthumously) for his courage and heroism shown during the testing of aviation equipment. A. G. Beschastnov was buried at the Ostrovtsy cemetery in the Moscow region.
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| The grave of Alexander Georgievich Beschastnov. |
| Source: Valery Ageev |
Valery Ageev
