Red Wings Airlines Flight 9268 was a repositioning flight that, on December 29, 2012 at 16:35 local time (12:35 GMT), crashed after overrunning Runway 19 at Moscow Vnukovo International Airport following a flight from Pardubice Airport, Czech Republic. The aircraft, a Tupolev Tu-204, broke up after the overrun, killing 5 of its crew of 8 (there were no passengers). The accident marked the second hull-loss of a Tupolev Tu-204, as well as the type's first (and so far only) fatal accident since its introduction in 1989.

Incident details

According to Vnukovo airport authorities, there were eight crew members onboard and no passengers. There were five fatalities. The aircraft overran the runway, splitting into three sections upon running into a ditch between the airport fence and the M3 highway, with parts of it, including the cockpit, spilling onto the road. The cockpit section of the aircraft became detached from the rest of the airframe.

It had been snowing prior to the accident and there was a significant cross wind with gusts of up to 29 knots. The aircraft, a Tupolev Tu-204-100B (reg RA-64047, c/n 1450743164047, s/n 047) was built in 2008. The airframe had accumulated 8,672 flight hours in 2,482 cycles, while the captain had more than 14,500 hours of total flying experience, of which more than 3,000 hours were on incident type. The accident was the first hull loss for Red Wings Airlines since its founding in 1999.

The Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs (МВД) reported that the captain, first officer, flight engineer and one flight attendant were killed on impact. Of the remaining four crew members, a female subsequently died of her injuries while the other three were in critical condition.

Those killed in the crash were Capt. Gennady Shmelev, 58 (Геннадий Шмелев), First Officer Evgeniy Astashenkov, 52 (Евгений Асташенков), Flight Engineer Igor Fisenko, 54 (Игорь Фисенко) and Flight Attendant Evgeniya Zhigalina, 25 (Евгения Жигалина). A second Flight Attendant, Tatiana Penkina, 31 (Татьяна Пенкина), died in a Moscow hospital the day after the accident.

The December 29 accident was the second runway overrun involving a Red Wings operated Tu-204-100B in nine days. A Moscow Vnukovo to Novosibirsk flight on December 20, 2012 overran runway 25 at Tolmachevo Airport by 1,150 feet (350 meters) when its brakes failed on landing. As a result of that incident, on December 24 the Federal Air Transport Agency of Russia (Rosaviatsia) issued a mandatory Airworthiness Directive requiring Red Wings and all other operators of the Tu-204 to inspect and apply extra lubrication to the braking system drive mechanism limit switches, located on the main landing shock absorber, "before next departure". On December 28, the day before the fatal Vnukovo accident, Rosaviatsia also formally notified Tupolev, the aircraft's manufacturer, that malfunctioning brakes had caused the Red Wings Tu-204 overrun accident at Novosibirsk.

 On December 30 Rosaviatsia chief Alexander Neradko announced that a preliminary examination of the aircraft's flight data recorder indicated that the flight had touched down in the proper landing area but, as in the December 20 incident in Novosibirsk, the braking system on RA-64047 appeared to have failed in the fatal Moscow overrun accident as well.

While the accident aircraft has been written off, Red Wings Airlines remains the largest operator of the type, with eight remaining in service. The only other Tu-204 to suffer a hull loss accident was RA-64011 which as Aviastar-TU Flight 1906 crashed while attempting to land in heavy fog at Domodedovo International Airport in Moscow on March 22, 2010 as it was completing a non-revenue repositioning operation from Hurghada International Airport in Egypt. While four of the eight crew members were seriously injured, all survived the accident.