More than 30 years ago, the pilots of the Soviet passenger plane Il-86 made history with a spectacular zero-gravity landing that saved the lives of all 382 people on board the plane that was bombed.
On March 18, 1991, Yevgeny Volodin boarded plane II-86 from Vnukovo airport outside Moscow. The 26-year-old carried a travel bag with 6 salt and pepper bottles tied into 3 pairs with duct tape.
The flight from Moscow to Novosibirsk was packed with 365 passengers, some of whom were carrying small children. The first two hours of the flight went smoothly until Volodin got out of his seat. He went to the toilet near the cockpit with a travel bag.
"Two hours after the plane took off, the crew heard a loud knock on the door," recalls co-pilot Yury Sytnik.
In fact, it was an explosion created by Volodin. The man sat on the toilet for about a minute, then opened the door and threw two incendiary bombs into the hallway. Volodin tried to throw a third ball but failed because fire broke out outside the toilet. The suspect was stuck in the toilet.
The pilots did not know what happened. One pilot told the flight engineer to open the door to see who was "knocking" so loudly. When the doors opened, flames blew into the cockpit. Fortunately, the engineer quickly slammed the door.
Inside the passenger compartment, everyone panicked. Some people ran to the emergency exit, trying to open it. Others fled from the flames burning from the top to the rear of the plane.
Zero gravity landing
Pilot Anatoly Ekzarkho made a snap decision. He decided to let the II-86 descend by going straight down. Sytnik said that the plane was heading down to the ground at a speed of 70-80 km/s, similar to the state of zero gravity in space.
The cockpit was filled with smoke and pilot Ekzarkho lost consciousness. Fortunately, Yury Sytnik promptly put on an oxygen mask and quickly found the nearest airport.
The crew quickly extinguished the fire in the passenger compartment, preventing it from spreading to electrical equipment. But another problem arose when the pilots chose the Koltsovo airport in Sverdlovsk (now Yekaterinburg) for an emergency landing: They could not see the runway.
"The distance is 8 km, the altitude is 400 m. Can you see the runway?", an air traffic controller asked. The crew replied: "We can't".
The smoke in the cockpit had dissipated after the fire was extinguished, but the metal soot was so thick that it stuck to the cockpit doors that light couldn't get through. In a moment of panic, Sytnyk reached up to wipe the cockpit door, creating a space the size of a saucer. When the distance was about 6 km, they began to see the runway. All of this happened just one minute before the plane was expected to land.
Police later confirmed this was a terrorist attack with the goal of killing everyone. The perpetrator Volodin still survived the incident.
Suspect Volodin spent 18 months researching airport security scanning systems and boarding procedures. He chose the largest Soviet passenger plane Il-86 to carry out the attack. He decided not to stuff metal in the two incendiary bombs to prevent the scanner from detecting them.
Volodin's original plan was to throw three bombs in three different directions to prevent any possibility of an emergency landing. However, the fact that he detonated bombs in the same place helped the crew respond in time to the disaster. All 382 people, including passengers and crew, were rescued.
Thanks to the information from the Volodin case, the security services continued to foil other terrorist plots in St. Petersburg, Kaliningrad.
The entire aircraft crew was later awarded the Medal of Courage. For Sytnyk, although he later experienced other stressful experiences while driving, but for him, the events of March 18, 1991 always left the deepest impression.
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