At the Borisoglebsk aviation base, the active training of the flight crews' practical skills in operating the Yak-130 combat training aircraft (UBS) continued during the investigation of the reasons for the emergency landing of the aircraft in June this year. In the Borisoglebsk sky planes were raised, piloted, among other things, by cadets undergoing training at the branch of the Military Educational and Scientific Center (VUNC) of the Air Force "Air Force Academy. Professors NE Zhukovsky and YA Gagarin ". Yak-130, created by OJSC Irkut Corporation, as you know, allow flying under the control of an instructor pilot, and are positioned as the first completely new aircraft created and built after the collapse of the USSR in modern Russia.
Despite the fact that the Yak-130 was put into service with the Russian Aerospace Forces a long time ago, a series of emergencies with these aircraft gives experts (and directly military pilots) a reason to say that the aircraft is "raw". Moreover, the relative difficulty of its piloting is noted. Difficulty in comparison with the possibilities of piloting those training models (for training cadets) that were used earlier.
Recall that in June 2017 in Borisoglebsk, the crew of the Yak-130 aircraft managed to land the aircraft without a nose landing gear. The yak was then flown by Kirill Klevtsov, a cadet of the Krasnodar branch of the VUNC VVA Air Force, and Mikhail Marchenko, an instructor-pilot. The skill of the crew made it possible not to intervene for the emergency services, which were at that moment at the airfield. The plane landed without a front pillar - the aircraft itself received minor damage. The crew was not injured.
On September 16 this year, another Yak-130 of the Borisoglebsk Aviation Training Center crashed, falling into a sunflower field a few kilometers from the airfield - on the border of the Voronezh and Volgograd regions. The plane, according to news agencies, was flown by a senior cadet of the branch of the Air Force Academy of the Russian Air Force Ivan Klimenko and an experienced instructor, Major Sergei Zavoloka. Major Zavoloka is not just an experienced pilot, he is one of the representatives of the Wings of Tavrida aerobatic team, which performs flights on the Yak-130. At the moment, the RF Ministry of Defense does not officially confirm the information that it was these servicemen who were in the UBS cockpit.
Both ejected pilots were sent to the hospital in a state of shock. The cadet and officer of the Russian Aerospace Forces did not receive any serious physical injuries.
At the moment, the Yak-130, masterfully landed at the Borisoglebsk airfield with an unreleased landing gear in June of this year, is going through repair procedures. The plane that crashed on September 16 cannot be restored. After falling to the ground, a fire broke out, and what was left of the plane was also badly burned.
Military technicians and representatives of the manufacturing enterprise evaluate the technical details that caused the nose strut to malfunction when the aircraft landed. Specialists of the Nizhny Novgorod company "Gidromash", which is engaged in the production of aircraft racks for the Yak-130, conduct their technological research to establish the causes of the incident.
It should be noted that the leadership of Hydromash is no less interested in conducting a high-quality and transparent investigation than the command of the Russian Aerospace Forces. The fact is that it is Gidromash that is engaged in the production of the main landing gear, for example, for the newest Russian passenger airliner MS-21, which attracts increased attention from not only the Russian public, but also from the foreign public. After all, MS-21 can (and should) enter the international market. And they are already talking about contracts for its acquisition. The company cannot afford to suffer reputational damage, considering that it demonstrated its developments at the Le Bourget show in France with presentation statements about the high reliability of the systems.
According to some reports, the failure of the Yak-130 front pillar could be associated with moisture ingress into the hydraulic systems. When asked where the "excess" moisture came from in the hydraulics, experts suggest that water gets in during the "storage" of the aircraft. The argument is this: the problem might not have been if the aircraft of this design were stored in special moisture-proof hangars.
But it's not just about the landing gear. There are no official results of the investigation into the reasons for the fall of the Yak-130 near Borisoglebsk. At the same time, in numerous news reports with links to representatives of the flight community (from among those who sat at the helm of the Yak-130), it is reported that these machines have so far, unfortunately, enough problems without racks. And they are enough even against the background of constant monitoring of the technical condition by manufacturers.
For 2017, Russia produced 133 Yak-130 combat training aircraft, of which the aforementioned Wings of Tavrida aerobatic team was formed at one time.
At the Borisoglebsk air base, the aircraft allow for the annual training of dozens of senior cadets of the Air Force Academy. And now, after two incidents in three months, this preparation has been called into question. And you need to answer this question without trying to hide the problem under the rug.
In fact, the Yak-130 is intended to replace the Czechoslovak Elki - this is how the pilots affectionately call the L-29 and L-39 combat training aircraft, which for decades were the main UBS of the Warsaw Pact countries. The Yak-130 surpasses the latest versions of the "Elek" both in electronic "stuffing" and in maneuverability in the air. This is understandable - the aircraft is modern, and it embodies the latest achievements of the defense industry. But for now, the problem is with how these latest achievements were implemented, and how much they are generally able to be mastered by the cadets, taking into account the safety requirements.
From the L-29 and L-39, which pilots themselves often call "flying desks" ("flying classes") because of the ease of control and high reliability, the Yak-130 differs not for the better in terms of these parameters. Manufacturers will obviously have to make an effort so that the reliability problems of the Yak-130 are resolved and that the flight crew and potential customers do not have any questions about the technical parameters of the aircraft.
But questions arise not only among young cadets, but also among experienced pilots. If there was a problem with one of the engines (such a working version is being considered), then why did the second engine fail? If the problem has nothing to do with the engines, what then? And if again we blame the moisture that falls "in the wrong place" for everything, then the question arises about the overall reliability of aviation equipment under the Yak-130 brand - is the plane really so "gentle" that it is not kept in special hangars can give unpredictable failures in various blocks and nodes?
