Moscow. August 18. INTERFAX-The United Aircraft Corporation (UAC) refutes media reports about the cancellation of the participation of the passenger Il-114 in the Army-2021 forum after the Il-112B disaster.
"At the moment, no decisions have been made regarding the experimental Il-114 aircraft," the UAC said on Wednesday in response to media reports about the ban on the flight of the Il-114-300 aircraft to Kubinka to participate in the Army forum after the Il-112B emergency.
The upgraded version of the passenger Il-114-300 is equipped with the same engines as the military transport Il-112B-TV7 - 117ST-01 developed by UEC-Klimov (part of the United Engine Corporation Rostec), which crashed the day before. This aircraft took off for the first time on December 16, 2020.
On Tuesday, the only flight model of the new Il-112B light transport crashed in the Moscow region. The crash occurred during landing during a training flight near the Kubinka airfield. As a result, all three crew members were killed - the chief pilot of PJSC "Il", the test pilot of the 1st class, Hero of Russia Nikolai Kuimov, the test pilot of the 1st class Dmitry Komarov, the flight engineer of the 1st class Nikolai Khludeev.
A few days before, a prototype of the Il-112B, continuing preliminary flight tests, flew from the Voronezh plant (VASO) to the Moscow region to participate in the Army-2021 forum, which will be held on August 22-28 in Kubinka, near Moscow.
"According to the preliminary version, the Il-112 disaster was preceded by a fire of the right engine," the UAC said.
After the fire in the Il-112B engine, the crew could not influence the situation and prevent the crash of the aircraft, an informed source told Interfax.
"Due to the fire, the engine thrust was lost. Since the fire occurred during the flight at the minimum altitude, the crew could hardly influence the situation, " the agency interlocutor said. According to him, the test pilots tried to take the car away from populated areas to the last to avoid casualties on the ground.
The crashed plane is in the register of experimental aviation of the Ministry of Industry and Trade of the Russian Federation, the commission to investigate the incident will be headed by deputy head of the department Oleg Bocharov, the ministry said.