Dark Networks: The 2003 Timor-Leste Il-76 crash and the global air cargo shadow industry
On the 31st of January 2003, a huge four-engine Ilyushin Il-76 cargo plane crashed just short of the poorly developed airstrip in the town of Baucau, Timor-Leste, killing all six crewmembers. The crash was briefly noted by the world press but never made headlines, nor would it have been likely to do so, because accidents like it happen all the time.
Cargo flights into remote and impoverished warzones on behalf of short-lived paper companies form a dangerous but essential underworld of the global aviation industry, bringing crucial supplies and humanitarian aid into some of the most desperate places on earth, while simultaneously supporting a shadow industry of arms trafficking, human smuggling, tax evasion, and other criminal enterprises. These flights crash with alarming regularity, but almost all of these accidents are never properly investigated and very little is known about them — sometimes basic facts such as the number of people killed, their identities, and even whether the crash happened at all are left up for debate.
Due to a fortuitous geopolitical happenstance, the crash in Timor-Leste in 2003 did not meet that fate. The government of the tiny, newly independent island nation instead invited Australia to investigate the cause of the crash and publish a final report, shedding light on the realities of these fly-by-night freight operations, as well as the difficult circumstances and poor decision-making that doomed the six crew of the enormous Ilyushin. The investigation also provided a starting point for me to dig into the history of the owners and operators of the aircraft, in an effort to understand who was responsible for the flight and their possible connections to the broader industry of clandestine cargo. What I found was a confusing maze of shell companies, conflicting records, leases and sub-leases and re-registrations. And by the end, one thing was clear: whoever owned this plane didn’t want to be found.
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Five hundred kilometers north of Australia, where the mighty volcanoes of the Sunda Arc descend into the glittering coral waters of the Banda Sea, lies the island of Timor. Covering an area approximately the size of Belgium, Timor is a mountainous, uplifted land, its steep-sided hills carpeted in tropical dry forests in the north and rainforests in the south, its spine deeply scored by braided rivers that rush headlong toward the turquoise ocean. It was here that an Il-76 came roaring out of the clouds on a foggy January morning in 2003, on its way to help restore one small piece of a land wracked by war and poverty, part of the vanguard of an effort to bring a tiny island nation back from the brink. And the story of that flight has to begin with the story of Timor-Leste.
European traders reached the bejeweled island in the early 16th century, and by the middle of the 18th, the Netherlands and Portugal began to establish colonies as part of their broader competition for land and resources in what is now Indonesia. After a series of defeats to the Dutch, the Portuguese presence in the region was eventually reduced to the remote eastern half of Timor, which became known in Portuguese as Timor-Leste, or East Timor. Ironically, the name “Timor” itself derives from the Malay word for “east,” and thus Timor-Leste, as the eastern half of the easternmost island of the Lesser Sunda chain, fittingly means East East.
As a minor outlying colony in the vast Portuguese Empire, Timor-Leste was largely ignored, except for a steady trickle of sandalwood exports. Portugal invested almost nothing in terms of infrastructure, education, or other basic duties of government; and for a while, life for the Timorese continued much as it always had, subsisting off the land and the sea. But in the 20th century, increasing extractive efforts by Portugal, followed by the horrors of Japanese occupation and Allied resistance, devastated the island. Resistance to Portuguese rule began to grow, but Portugal, ruled by a militaristic dictatorship, refused to relinquish its remaining colonies, including Timor-Leste.
In 1974, the Carnation Revolution overthrew the Portuguese government, and the new regime immediately began to withdraw from the colonies. Over the next several years, countries like Angola, Mozambique, and Guinea-Bissau achieved independence as Europe’s last true colonial empire finally collapsed. In Timor-Leste, the power vacuum was filled by local pro-independence factions, including the Timorese Democratic Union and the Revolutionary Front for an Independent East Timor, known as Fretilin. In August 1975, a brief civil war erupted as both factions fought the remaining Portuguese and each other, resulting in a victory by the socialist Fretilin after two weeks.
Fearing socialist influence in the region and seeing an opportunity to expand its territory, Indonesia’s military dictatorship plotted to occupy Timor-Leste before the revolutionary government could garner international recognition or support. Indonesia invaded Timor-Leste on December 7, 1975, attacking Fretilin with overwhelming force. The attack was widely seen as a violation of international law, and the United Nations Security Council unanimously called upon Indonesia to withdraw, but the invasion continued, and in fact the United States, Australia, and several other countries supplied Indonesia with weapons. Over the next three years, Indonesian forces drove Fretilin fighters into the hills and set about crushing all remaining resistance.
The Indonesian occupation of Timor-Leste was particularly brutal. Crimes confirmed by the United Nations and other official sources included but were not limited to indiscriminate massacres of entire villages, mass executions of civilians, forced starvation, forced relocation to camps, use of chemical weapons, widespread napalm bombardments, murder of surrendering civilians, sexual slavery, and forced disappearances. Estimates of the death toll during the Indonesian occupation range from around 80,000 to above 200,000, mostly civilians, out of a pre-invasion population of less than 750,000. These actions have been described as a genocide by experts on human rights abuses.
International attention was drawn to the plight of Timor-Leste in 1991 when Indonesian forces massacred over 200 pro-independence protestors on the streets of Dili, the capital. Following the massacre, grassroots pressure began to build, and in 1996 independence leader José Ramos-Horta was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. And finally, in 1998, Indonesian president Suharto resigned after 30 years in power, paving the way for Indonesia’s transition to democracy — and for a resolution to the conflict in Timor-Leste. International talks eventually led to the arrangement of a referendum on 5 May 1999, administered by a newly created United Nations Mission to East Timor, in which more than 75% of the population voted for independence. The bloodshed should have ended there, but sadly, it didn’t.
When it became clear that the independence vote would succeed, anti-independence militias trained by the Indonesian military rose up around the country, massacring civilians, setting fire to infrastructure, and forcing the UN observers to withdraw. In response, the United Nations assembled an Australian-led peacekeeping force to occupy the country and restore order. By the turn of the millennium, the entirety of Timor-Leste was under United Nations control, and at long last, the war was over.
Three centuries of colonial neglect followed by 25 years of bloody conflict had left Timor-Leste with almost no foundation on which to build a functioning country. The population was desperately poor; the majority of the inhabitants were malnourished; almost no one outside a handful of major towns had access to electricity. What little infrastructure had existed now lay mostly in ruins. Industry, private or otherwise, was practically non-existent.
The goal of the United Nations in Timor-Leste was to establish some semblance of a state that could be handed over to the nascent local government at the end of the planned two-year occupation. The United Nations Transitional Administration in East Timor, or UNTAET, ultimately ran the country until its formal independence on 20 May, 2002. However, UN forces remained in the country until 2012, carrying out various administrative and law enforcement functions.
This is basically a Wikipedia summary of the events, because I’m an aviation writer, not a historian. In fact, when I started researching this case I knew next to nothing about Timor-Leste, and most of what I now know does in fact come from everyone’s favorite online rabbit hole of an encyclopedia. However, I think there’s value in reading even a Wikipedia summary of the history of Timor-Leste, not only because it’s necessary background for this story, but also because it’s practically unknown outside of the immediate region, and it was that very lack of attention that allowed such a heinous injustice to persist in the first place.
In any case, the key takeaway from this history is that Timor-Leste in 2003 was a nation that had just emerged from unimaginable horror, having achieved what generations of its people had fought for, only to face the prospect of building a country from absolutely nothing. Even in 2025, Timor-Leste is on the UN’s list of 44 Least Developed countries, with a rank of 152nd in GDP per capita and 155th in development (HDI); the World Bank ranks it last in the world in its capacity to register property, enforce contracts, and resolve insolvency. In 2015, half the population was illiterate and more than half lived on less than US$1.25 per day, and in 2010 less than 40% of the population had access to electricity.
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Another grim statistic about Timor-Leste is that all of the country’s telephone infrastructure was destroyed in the violence in 1999, rendering communication with the country particularly difficult. In fact, the lack of telecommunications infrastructure in Timor-Leste was the proximate justification for the flight at the center of this story.
In 2002, UNTAET commissioned a new telecommunications system from Timor Telecom, at that time a majority-owned subsidiary of Portugal Telecom, which was to include mobile, landline, and internet infrastructure. All of that infrastructure then had to be physically transported to Timor-Leste.
At this point, a few things were never quite elucidated in my research. What we know for sure is that some of this equipment ended up in Macau in January 2003, and an unnamed Singapore-based company was made responsible for arranging its transportation from Macau to Timor-Leste. The relationship between this company and Timor Telecom was not explained in any of my sources, nor did any of them mention this company’s main area of business, or even its name. Unless this company was somehow tied to the manufacturer of the equipment, then it was presumably just a middleman.
On 20 January 2003, the Singapore-based company entered into a contract with a Cambodia-based air carrier to transport 32 tons of telecommunications equipment from Macau to Timor-Leste using an Ilyushin Il-76 cargo plane on 30 January. The final report on this accident doesn’t name any of the companies involved, but my research indicates that the Cambodian company was called Astro Air.
The Ilyushin Il-76 is a high-wing, four-engine transport plane designed in the Soviet Union in the late 1960s as a strategic airlifter for both military and civilian purposes. The Il-76 features a deployable rear loading ramp, ample cargo space, a two-deck cockpit with a navigator’s station below the pilots, and hardened landing gear designed for heavy landings on unpaved airstrips. It was the backbone of the Soviet Union’s and now Russia’s strategic airlift capability, and large numbers were produced for the Soviet military. After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, many of these aircraft entered the civilian market, where they were snapped up at low prices by small companies, mostly in the developing world. The planes proved popular among these companies for their low operational cost, large capacity, and ruggedness.
Pilots were also not hard to come by. With the collapse of Russia’s aviation industry, many Russian pilots lost their jobs at home and quite a few were desperate enough to take positions with small foreign operators, despite low pay and dangerous working conditions.
The particular Il-76 that was commissioned for the flight to Timor-Leste was built in 1986 in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, as an Il-76 MD, the MD designation meaning “modified/long range,” with registration CCCP-76667. Russian records show that it flew for the Soviet Air Force until 1991, then briefly for the Russian Air Force before it was transferred to the Ukrainian Air Force in 1992. It remained with the Ukrainian Air Force until 1995, when it was sold to a Ukrainian civilian company called Veteran, run by a union of veterans of the Soviet-Afghan War. During this time it was converted to an Il-76 TD, which is simply the civilian designation of the MD, and was re-registered as UR-76667. Veteran continued to operate the aircraft until July 2001, when it was sold to a company based in Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates.
This Sharjah-based company was the lynchpin of this entire story. At the time of the accident, this company still owned the aircraft, but this fact was obscured by a series of leases and sub-leases.
Astro Air, the Cambodian company that contracted with the Singapore-based company, was neither the owner nor even the operator of the aircraft. In fact, at the time of the flight to Timor-Leste, the Il-76 formerly known as CCCP-76667 was registered in Laos as RDPL-34141, and that country’s records showed it was operated by a Laos-based company that I identified as Euro-Asia Aviation (not be confused with Kazakh airline Euro Asia Air).
According to the final report, and substituting in the company names that I tracked down, it appears that on 1 November 2002, the Sharjah-based company (more on them in the latter part of this article) leased the aircraft to Euro-Asia Aviation with the stipulation that the owners would provide the flight crew and loadmaster. The lease also stated that Euro-Asia Aviation was not permitted to sub-lease the aircraft except with the owners’ written consent.
At the time of the lease, Euro-Asia Aviation did not have an air operator certificate (AOC). It got one from the Laos Department of Civil Aviation (DCA) on November 9, eight days after the lease was signed. This leads me to believe that Euro-Asia Aviation was set up specifically to operate this aircraft.
A photograph of the accident Il-76 with Laotian registration RDPL-34141 (see above) shows that this aircraft was in Sharjah in November 2002, but it wasn’t painted in the livery of Euro-Asia Aviation — instead, it was wearing the livery of an Iranian airline called Aram Air. Records show that in August 2001, one month after acquiring the accident aircraft, the Sharjah-based owner registered the aircraft in Iran as EP-ALK, then in September they leased it to an airline based in Tehran, which at least one source identifies as Atlas Air (not to be confused with the US airline of the same name). That lease lasted less than three months, and in December 2001 it was leased to Aram Air and re-registered as EP-RAB. It remained in service for Aram Air for 10 months, until its Iranian registration was canceled in October 2002, shortly before its transfer to Euro-Asia Aviation. Anecdotal sources suggest that registering the aircraft in Iran may have been a scheme to take advantage of deep fuel subsidies offered at that time by the Iranian government to Iranian air carriers.
Records show that a second Il-76 followed a similar path. Originally built for the Soviet Air Force as CCCP-76562, this aircraft also was transferred to the Ukrainian Air Force before ending up at Aram Air in May of 2001, where it was re-registered as EP-RAJ. My assumption is that this airplane was also owned by the same Sharjah-based company, but the records only cover operators of the aircraft, not owners. In any case, this aircraft was subsequently transferred to Euro-Asia Aviation and re-registered in Laos as RDPL-34138. Once source states that this occurred in “late 2002” — just like RDPL-34141 — and a photograph (see below) shows this aircraft in Bratislava, Slovakia on January 9, 2003 wearing Euro-Asia Aviation livery. As far as I can tell, RDPL-34141 and RDPL-34138 were the only aircraft ever operated by Euro-Asia Aviation, and both of them most likely came from the same owner. Furthermore, while I was not able to prove that the Sharjah-based owner was also the founder of Euro-Asia Aviation, it seems a likely possibility.
On 13 December 2002, four days after approving Euro-Asia Aviation’s AOC, the Laos DCA granted an airworthiness certificate to RDPL-34141. Five days after that, on 18 December, Euro-Asia Aviation entered into a sub-lease with the Cambodian company Astro Air, the terms of which stated that Euro-Asia Aviation would supply the flight crew and that the aircraft would remain registered in Laos, but Astro Air would be responsible for providing waybills and cargo documentation to the countries in which the aircraft was operated. Later, on 30 December, the Laos DCA formally recognized Astro Air as an “operator” of the aircraft. After the accident, all parties acknowledged that Euro-Asia Aviation had not sought the owner’s permission to sub-lease the aircraft to Astro Air, in violation of the original lease terms. I’ll go into more detail about the potential significance of this fact toward the end of this article.
RDPL-34141 began flying for Astro Air on 28 December 2002, with a series of flights between Mumbai and Bangkok. Although it’s unclear where the aircraft was located between being photographed in Sharjah in November and the flights to Bangkok and Mumbai in December, what I can say is that there is no evidence that the aircraft was ever in Laos, except for the fact that it had been given a Laotian airworthiness certificate, which presumably would have required an in-person inspection.
On 2 January 2003, RDPL-34141 left Bangkok and flew to Taipei, Taiwan. All indications are that it remained there for the next 28 days. A photograph of RDPL-34141 (see below) taken sometime in January 2003 shows the aircraft parked at Taipei’s Chiang Kai-shek International Airport, wearing Astro Air livery.
Finally, on 30 January 2003, RDPL-34141 left Taipei and flew to Macau to pick up the equipment for Timor Telecom. How the Singapore-based middleman got ahold of this plane, operated by this tangle of companies, is unknown. What is known is that the Singapore-based company appeared to treat Astro Air as the operator of the aircraft, because the contract between the two described Astro Air as the “carrier.” However, the cargo manifest for the flight to Timor-Leste identified Euro-Asia Aviation as the “carrier.”
Back on 28 January, the Singapore-based company sent a request on behalf of Astro Air to the United Nations asking for landing permission at the aerodrome in Baucau for 30 January. Although Dili is Timor-Leste’s capital and by far largest city, its runway was (and still is) too small to handle large jets like the Il-76. The only airport in the country capable of handling an Il-76 is Cakung Airport in Baucau, Timor-Leste’s second-largest “city” — although with a population of about 17,000, it’s not much of a city, and amenities are extremely limited. Cakung Airport was built in the 1940s to ensure that Portuguese Timor had an airfield capable of handling large aircraft, but it has never seen heavy use because there isn’t enough demand for travel to Timor-Leste to justify using any aircraft types that can’t land at Dili instead. Therefore, Baucau historically has seen use mainly during times of conflict when there exists a strategic airlift requirement, whether by Indonesia during the occupation or by the UN after Indonesia’s withdrawal. So by early 2003, Baucau was only seeing occasional use; anecdotally, months would sometimes pass between flights, almost all of which were in support of UN troop rotations.
In response to the Singapore-based company’s request for landing rights, the UN approved the flight and advised that air traffic services were only available on troop rotation days. Baucau has never had an air traffic control service, but for troop rotations the UN did provide its own “air traffic service,” or ATS, which provided flights with information only. The UN’s response to the Singapore-based company didn’t specify which days were UN troop rotation days, nor did the company ask.
Instead, later that same day, the Singapore-based company contacted an unnamed Dili-based freight forwarding company and requested that they arrange payments for landing fees and provision of ATS at Baucau for the incoming flight. The Dili-based company then contacted the UN and received a quote for the stated services, as well as firefighting services and security. According to UN Air Operations, the Dili-based company replied that the only service that would be needed was help with unloading the cargo. The company never paid a cent to the UN for any services because they reportedly never received an invoice, while the UN Mission in East Timor stated that they never received any request for air traffic services from anyone associated with the operation.
This sequence of events raises several questions, none of which have straightforward answers. My educated guess is that the quote offered by the UN for the provision of airport services was likely quite steep, possibly beyond the limited budget of any of the companies involved, and that someone at some level of the operation probably decided not to bother. However, as we will soon see, this information doesn’t appear to have been passed to the flight crew. Nor is it clear who actually made the decision not to request air traffic services. In fact, the General Director of Euro-Asia Aviation later told investigators that the entire 28 January request for landing permission at Baucau had been sent without his company’s authorization, although it’s unclear whether this was the result of a miscommunication or whether the General Director was simply trying to shield himself from liability.
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Meanwhile on 30 January, over in Taiwan, the flight crew got RDPL-34141 ready to fly and left for Macau on schedule. It wasn’t easy finding details on the flight crew, but I did eventually identify them, albeit unofficially, thanks to some Russian pilots’ forum posts from 2003. Their ages were not mentioned in the final report but some other basic information did turn up.
The pilot in command was Captain Pyotr Shadrunov (another spelling, Chadrunov, appears in the forum post, but is likely erroneous), who was a very experienced Il-76 pilot with about 14,500 total flying hours. None of the pilots’ exact Il-76 experience was available, but it was likely significant given that all of the pilots, including Shadrunov, had held Il-76 type ratings for at least ten years. The Russian forum posts state that he was from Magadan, that his father was also a pilot based in Magadan, and that he had previously flown the Il-76 in Afghanistan and Angola. Acquaintances remembered him as a man who was quick to smile.
The investigation found that Shadrunov had a Russian pilot’s license, and despite the lease terms specifying that the flight crew should meet Laotian licensing requirements, there was no evidence that the Laos DCA had authorized his Russian license as a valid alternative to a Laotian license. This was one of many paperwork discrepancies related to Laos’s seemingly non-existent monitoring of Euro-Asia Aviation and its operations.
The first officer was identified as Andrei Matvienko, who had about 6,800 total hours. According to forum posts by his former colleagues, Matvienko had previously flown the Il-76 for Rus airline (not to be confused with RusAir) until that company was shut down by the Russian transport ministry due to major flight safety violations discovered after the fatal crash of one of the airline’s Il-76s at Chkalovsky Airport in Moscow in July 2001. It just so happened that around that time, the Sharjah-based company at the heart of this story was looking for Il-76 pilots. The final report and other sources both confirm that all of the pilots worked for the Sharjah-based company, and at least one forum post states that Matvienko was in financial difficulty when he took the job.
The investigation found that Matvienko’s medical certificate was expired, and his Laotian pilot’s license did not indicate that he possessed an instrument rating (required for flight in low visibility conditions). In fact, there was no evidence that Laotian licensing law even required him to possess one, which was not in accordance with the requirements of the International Civil Aviation Organization, of which Laos is a member. However, given his previous work history, he no doubt had plenty of instrument flying experience and had certainly held an instrument rating in the past.
The third member of the flight crew was Flight Engineer Yuri Busygin (also spelled Bushigin in some forum posts, probably erroneously). He had about 5,100 hours, but little else about him is known.
The fourth member of the crew, and the second most experienced, was 58-year-old navigator Alexander Dyatlov, who had about 9,300 hours. The Russian forum posts indicate that he was a former flight test engineer at the Gromov Flight Test Institute, where he tested navigation systems, avionics, and ejection systems. He would have been sitting separately from the rest of the flight crew, down below in the navigator’s station, in his own little bubble surrounded by windows.
Two other crewmembers were also on board, whom the final report identified as loadmasters, although some unofficial sources say one of them was a mechanic, which would make sense for the type of operation they were conducting. These two men were identified as Valery Ukhvanov and Yuri Yerokhin. The forum posts state that Ukhvanov was from Belarus, making him the only person on board who was not a Russian national.
The flight crew were all professional pilots who had fallen on hard times, pushed out of Russia’s badly shrunken airline world to find themselves at the margin of the global aviation industry, stuck for long periods in unfamiliar countries far from their families. The airlines for which they flew operated largely outside any regulatory accountability structure, and they would have had little choice but to agree to inhumane working conditions, long duty days, and dangerous operations.
The reason I went so far to put names behind their titles and flight hour counts is to make it easier to remember that these men were human beings who probably didn’t want to be there. In stories like this, it’s very easy to dismiss the people who fly these types of flights as just “sketchy Russians,” as if that’s somehow an explanation for their fate — and yes, they were Russians, and yes, they were involved in some very sketchy things that I’m going to describe in detail, but they were there in that cockpit because they had to put food on the table, and when it’s 2003 and your credentials are an Il-76 type rating, this was how you did it.
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On the evening of 30 January, the aircraft and crew arrived in Macau, and the cargo loading process began. The plan was to fly to Baucau later that same night, offload the cargo, then continue to Rayong, Thailand with a stopover in Makassar, Indonesia. But this plan ran into a snag right away, as it turned out that the Il-76 falls under a high-decibel noise class that was forbidden from operating at Macau during the night. As a result, the departure was delayed by 9 hours, and the flight crew left to spend the night in a hotel.
When the flight finally departed on the morning of the 31st, the flight crew probably would have felt some pressure to prevent further delays, perhaps even to make up for lost time. There is also plenty of evidence that they would rather have been just about anywhere else. For instance, investigators found that none of the pilots were wearing their uniforms, even though company policy required them to do so, which has been interpreted as a sign of detachment, or possibly a lack of respect for their employer and for themselves. It’s certainly not the mark of a flight crew who feels deeply invested in the mission at hand. But if image isn’t seen as important, then why not wear more comfortable street clothes? Given their situation, I sort of understand why they didn’t bother with uniforms.
In any case, the cruise phase was uneventful until approximately 14:26 local time in Timor-Leste, when the cockpit voice recorder captured Captain Shadrunov briefing the planned approach to Baucau.
Cakung Airport has one runway, oriented northwest to southeast, designated 14/32. Most approaches to Baucau are flown visually, but if weather conditions did not permit, then in 2003 the only available instrument procedure was an NDB approach to runway 14. This approach was based off the non-directional beacon, or NDB, co-located with the field.
An NDB is a simple radio beacon that can be tracked using an automatic direction finder, or ADF, which indicates the direction from the aircraft’s position to the beacon. The NDB approach procedure at Baucau called for the crew to overfly the NDB, then, if necessary, enter a holding pattern with outbound heading 170 and inbound 350, before flying outbound from the NDB to the north, then performing a left course reversal to head back inbound toward the NDB on a heading of 146 degrees. If the runway was not in sight by the designated missed approach point, a missed approach should be executed. The prescribed initial altitude over the NDB was 5,500 feet, followed by a continuous descent to a minimum descent altitude (MDA) of 2,260 feet (669 m), equivalent to a minimum descent height (MDH) of 531 feet (162 m) above the runway threshold elevation. Further descent was not permitted unless the runway was in sight.
*Note: Throughout this article, the term “height” means height above the airfield elevation, and the term “altitude” means height above sea level. To obtain height from altitude, subtract 1,729 feet, and vice versa.
This was a fairly standard NDB approach procedure with no especially unusual features except for the fact that the approach course of 146 degrees was slightly offset from the runway heading for terrain separation purposes, necessitating a minor course correction once the runway was in sight. Furthermore, while NDB approaches were already outmoded and rarely performed in many parts of the world by 2003, less developed regions still use them regularly, and these pilots’ resumés suggest they probably encountered such approaches all the time.
However, that didn’t mean the approach was simple to fly. NDB approaches demand a higher workload because, like all non-precision approaches, they provide no vertical (altitude) guidance to the flight crew; and NDBs provide less information to the flight crew than other types of radio aids, such as VORs.
At Baucau in particular, the approach was further complicated by the lack of air traffic services, which also meant that critical information like the local air pressure and barometric altimeter setting would be unavailable. Some uncontrolled airports have means to broadcast this information automatically, but Baucau was not one of them. Data from the weather observing system had to be obtained from air traffic services, which were only available for UN troop rotations. Prior to 24 January 2003, a NOTAM (notice to airmen) had warned crews that the system was faulty and that the local air pressure could be obtained by using the reported pressure in Dili and adding 320 feet to all minimum altitudes to account for the pressure difference at Baucau’s higher altitude. But on 24 January, the equipment was fixed and the NOTAM was withdrawn, leaving crews with no official way to obtain the local atmospheric pressure unless they were part of a UN troop rotation. There is no evidence that the flight crew was aware of this when they departed Macau.
Another issue with this approach was the accuracy of the available charts. The Timor-Leste Civil Aviation Division (CAD) had published official approach charts for Baucau, albeit without an accompanying aerodrome chart or other supporting documents. A NOTAM was in force advising that flight crews could acquire these charts from the CAD website, and the Singapore-based company stated that they had done so when they applied for landing rights and had then forwarded the charts to the “operator,” which in their view was probably Astro Air.
It’s unclear whether these charts ever reached the flight crew. In fact, the crew seemed to be relying on a different set of approach charts published by the Jeppesen company, which were technically valid, but were not the ones carrying the approval of the Timor-Leste CAD. It turns out that the Jeppesen charts contained a number of errors, which I’ll get into shortly. It is also worth noting that the Jeppesen charts listed all distances, speeds, and altitudes in US Imperial units, while the Il-76 instrumentation was in metric units. Most of the world uses nautical miles, knots, and feet for distance, speed, and altitude, respectively, but the former Soviet Union and China largely use kilometers, kilometers per hour, and meters for this purpose, and as such, the Il-76’s instrumentation was not originally designed to display Imperial units. The Il-76 flight manual used by the crew stated that Il-76s engaged in international operations had been modified with a backup altimeter capable of reading in feet, but it was unclear whether RDPL-34141 actually had this instrument.
With reference to the Jeppesen charts, Captain Shadrunov led a briefing for the runway 14 NDB approach. During his briefing, he said, “At Baucau we’ll land with 135 degrees NDB approach,” which was not the correct landing course — remember, the landing course was 146 degrees. He got the number 135 from reading the runway heading listed on the Jeppesen charts, which was not the same as the approach heading, and, it turns out, was flat-out wrong — the actual runway heading was 139 degrees.
Continuing the briefing, Shadrunov stated that they would approach at a speed of 250 km/h (135 kt) on the glidepath — although there was no official glidepath — and then reviewed the missed approach procedure. Reading off the Jeppesen chart, he provided the missed approach altitude and other altitudes in feet, without converting to meters, and none of the other crewmembers requested clarification.
His briefing did not cover a large number of key items, including the minimum descent altitude/height for the approach (689/162 m), the starting altitude for the approach (5,500 ft/1,676 m), the altimeter settings for Baucau, the weather at the destination, or the applicable NOTAMs. The briefing also did not mention that the minimum safe altitude (MSA) within 10 nautical miles of Baucau, applicable when flying outside of an approved airway or procedure, was 9,300 ft (2,834 m), nor that the lowest safe altitude (LSALT) in the airway from Ambon to Baucau, which they were expected to maintain until reaching the NDB, was 4,500 ft (1,372 m).
A comprehensive approach briefing is crucial to a successful approach and landing, especially in an operating environment where numerous hazards exist. The purpose of the briefing is to familiarize the entire crew with all aspects of the procedure, identify and plan around any known hazards, and ensure that all crewmembers have a shared mental model of their intentions. Failure to perform a proper approach briefing is correlated with negative outcomes.
In many cases, an inadequate approach briefing can stem from a company culture that doesn’t value or enforce adherence to standard operating procedures. However, as we will soon see, the reason that Captain Shadrunov didn’t comprehensively brief the runway 14 NDB approach procedure is probably because he had no intention to actually use it.
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After the briefing, while still in cruise at 28,000 feet, the flight crew completed the before descent checklist, which was read out by navigator Dyatlov while Captain Shadrunov and First Officer Matvienko confirmed each item. This checklist included turning on their radio altimeters and setting the bugs to the standard heights.
A radio altimeter measures the aircraft’s altitude above the ground directly below it. Each pilot has a radio altimeter, which includes the ability to set a “bug,” meaning a small indicator on the instrument to remind the pilot of a reference altitude. On the Il-76, descending below the bug setting illuminates an amber light with a “delta” symbol and a pair of “decision height” annunciators on the pilots’ glare shields, while also triggering an automated voice that speaks the words “below preselected altitude” (in Russian) into the pilots’ and navigator’s headsets.
On the Il-76, standard procedure was to set the first officer’s radio altimeter bug to the “holding altitude,” which in this case was presumably the altitude of the holding pattern around the Baucau NDB, or to 750 meters (2,460 ft) if the holding altitude was higher than 750 meters, since this was the highest value the altimeter could display. At the same time, the procedure was to set the captain’s radio altimeter bug to 60 meters (197 ft), or to the MDH for the approach if the MDH was less than 60 meters.
As a personal aside, the logic of this procedure is unclear to me, because I struggle to see an operational reason to set the radio altimeter bug to a value below that of the MDH even if another altimeter has the MDH/A set already (which may not be the case, given the procedures described in the accident report). The report doesn’t say whether any of the barometric altimeters would normally be set to trigger an alert at the MDA/H, but I can say that no such alert is mentioned in the final report. So my impression, with the limited information available to me, is that setting the captain’s bug to 60 m instead of the MDH is at best not very valuable, and at worst potentially dangerous, insofar as 60 m may be considerably below the minimum for the approach, thus delaying the low altitude alert should a premature descent below the MDH occur inadvertently.
In any case, when the navigator called out for radio altimeters, both the Captain Shadrunov and First Officer Matvienko replied, “ON,” and Martvienko added “on the right 750.” However, Shadrunov didn’t call out setting 60 meters on his altimeter, and in fact the investigation found that this value was not set. The reason for this omission was not determined.
Moving forward through the checklist, Shadrunov announced that the (incorrect) landing course of 135 degrees had been set, and then he and the navigator stated that they had tuned into the Baucau NDB. Evidence shows that the NDB was set correctly, but the pilots didn’t perform the required cross-check of their selection.
At this point, with the checklist complete, Captain Shadrunov instructed First Officer Matvienko to contact Baucau ATS to receive the latest weather. Matvienko subsequently called Baucau ATS five times over the next four minutes, but he obviously received no response, because no ATS personnel were on duty. The fact the pilots even attempted to call Baucau shows that one of three things was true: either they hadn’t read the NOTAMs and didn’t know that Baucau was only staffed on UN troop rotation days; they thought it was a UN troop rotation day; or they thought someone had arranged for ATS to be provided.
The investigation was unable to determine which of these three hypotheses was correct, but personally I would be inclined to rule out that they thought a UN troop rotation was occurring, due to a lack of evidence. Given the conflicting statements from various companies about whether ATS should have been requested, it is also conceivable that the pilots had been told by someone that ATS would be available. On the other hand, there’s plenty of evidence that the pilots hadn’t read the NOTAMs that were provided to them with the dispatch paperwork, so I don’t think a miscommunication is even necessary to explain their actions here.
At 14:39, at this point still in contact with air traffic control at Ujung Padung in Indonesia, the navigator told the captain that it was time to descend to flight level 250 (25,000 feet, 7,600 meters). He then reported the descent to Ujung Padung and told the controllers that they had contact with Baucau, which he knew to be false. On the basis of this false information, the controller signed off and advised them to contact Baucau for landing. As Shadrunov initiated the descent, Matvienko tried three more times to raise Baucau tower, without success.
At 14:41, RDPL-34141 descended through 25,000 feet and entered Timor-Leste airspace. Except for Dili airport tower, there was no air traffic control facility serving any part of the country’s airspace, so aircraft operating over Timor-Leste below flight level 250 were expected to use a common frequency, similar to the common traffic advisory frequency (CTAF) used at uncontrolled airports in much of the world. The expectation is that aircraft operating within the uncontrolled airspace will use the common frequency to announce their identity, position, direction of flight, and intentions so that all aircraft understand where the traffic is and what it is going to do, for purposes of separation.
Although a NOTAM was in force advising flight crews to use the Timor Common High frequency of 123.45 MHz between 10,000 and 25,000 feet, the Il-76 crew never tuned in to this frequency and never announced their intentions. It’s unclear whether this was because they didn’t know they were supposed to use the common frequency, or whether they disregarded the requirement because they weren’t expecting to encounter any other traffic. The latter was not an unreasonable assumption in Timor-Leste, especially at the time, but it seems weird to stake one’s life on it.
Now descending blind through uncontrolled airspace, Captain Shadrunov disconnected the autopilot without telling anyone and began flying manually. Meanwhile, First Officer Matvienko tried a further 13 times to raise Baucau tower.
At 14:48, navigator Dyatlov suggested that they “make the first approach as a control and land on the second,” meaning that they should make a test approach. Shadrunov agreed with the suggestion, and added that they would turn left off the airway onto a heading of 135, which the Jeppesen chart erroneously showed as the runway heading.
“Yes, we’ll turn left and I’ll give you data for landing, will be no problems,” Dyatlov replied.
This discussion showed that for the test approach, the pilots intended to leave the Ambon-Baucau airway and line up with the runway before overflying the NDB. Since this was not part of any published airway or approach procedure, the sector minimum safe altitude (MSA) applied, which would be 9,300 feet (2,835 m). There was no discussion of this fact among the crew, nor did the flight engineer or the first officer offer any comment on the plan whatsoever. The absence of these two flight crew members from the cockpit decision-making process would be noted throughout the flight, as the more experienced captain and navigator made all the decisions together, while the junior crewmembers’ input was neither solicited nor offered.
Moments later, as they approached 10,000 feet, Shadrunov asked Dyatlov for the altimeter setting.
For low altitude flight, barometric altimeters must be calibrated according to the local sea level pressure, known as QNH, in order to provide an accurate pressure-based altitude reading. If the selected sea level pressure is too low, the altitude will read too low as well; if the pressure is too high, it will read too high. However, as I mentioned earlier, Cakung Airport had no way to transmit QNH when air traffic services were off duty, and there was no longer a procedure explaining how to use the Dili QNH for approaches to Baucau. The flight crew could still have used the Dili QNH simply by calling the Dili tower, who also could have explained why Baucau tower was not picking up, but the crew never attempted to do this. Instead, Dyatlov just told Shadrunov to set his altimeter using a QNH of 760 mm Hg (millimeters of mercury*), which is standard sea level pressure. Standard pressure is normally only used above a designated transition altitude, in order to ensure that all aircraft in upper-level airspace have their altimeters set to a common baseline. The actual local sea level pressure is only used when approaching an airport. But for obvious reasons, approaching an airport using the standard pressure setting when the actual QNH is unknown could be extremely dangerous, depending on the difference between the two.
*Note: In the United States, inches of mercury are used for altimeter calibration. Millimeters of mercury are used in China and the former Soviet Union, while the rest of the world uses hectopascals.
However, in the former Soviet Union, approaches were historically made with reference not to QNH, but to QFE. QFE is the actual local pressure at the field elevation, whereas QNH is the sea level pressure at the field, even if the field is not at sea level. In practical terms, this means that if the field elevation is 1,000 feet and you have a barometric altimeter set according to QNH, the altimeter will read 1,000 feet when you’re on the runway; and if your altimeter is set according to QFE, it will read zero when you’re on the runway. And while Russia today is transitioning away from the use of QFE, in 2003 it was all these pilots knew. So Dyatlov used the field elevation for Cakung Airport in the Jeppesen charts, which was 1,729 feet (527 m), corresponding to sea level pressure minus 62 hectopascals, and converted this value to millimeters of mercury, arriving at a QFE setting of 714 mm Hg.
After the accident, investigators estimated that the real QNH for Cakung on the day of the flight was about 758 mm Hg, for a real QFE of 712, which meant that the pilots’ barometric altimeters would have read about 60 feet (18.3 m) too high. Survey results showed that the runway elevation shown on the Jeppesen chart was also 26 feet too high, but this would have had no real effect. So, taken in total, Dyatlov’s estimate wasn’t a bad one, and 60 feet would have seemed unlikely to mean the difference between life and death. But flying is a margins game, and theirs were being slowly and steadily eroded.
Having made these selections, the crew continued their descent with reference to standard barometric pressure, reaching 10,000 feet at 14:49. Below 10,000 feet in Timor-Leste airspace, the Timor Common Low frequency should be used to broadcast position and intentions, but the crew didn’t tune in to this channel either.
Less than a minute later, the flight also descended through 9,300 feet, which was the 10-nautical-mile MSA for Baucau. Further descent to 4,500 feet was only permitted if they were on the Ambon-Baucau airway, but the flight data shows that they were never actually tracking directly toward the Baucau NDB, and thus were never on the airway, likely because they were navigating with reference to GPS instead. It should also be noted that the MSA wouldn’t apply if they were in visual meteorological conditions (VMC), but witnesses in the Baucau area reported that the conditions were overcast with a cloud base at about 1,000 feet (305 m) above ground level and a visibility of only about 1,500 meters. Therefore, the MSA should have applied.
The fact that the crew were not navigating with respect to the NDB is significant in light of what happened next. It is known that navigator Dyatlov was actually providing heading and position data to Captain Shadrunov based on the readout from a Bendix/King KLN-90B GPS navigation system, which was installed at the navigator’s station as an aftermarket product. The system was not described in the flight manual, and it could only display in feet and nautical miles; it was not capable of displaying distances in terms of meters and kilometers. That meant that Dyatlov had to manually convert the GPS readouts before passing them to Shadrunov, whose instruments displayed metric units.
Over the next two minutes, while Dyatlov provided their distance to run and lateral offset from the runway, Shadrunov continued the descent through the NDB approach commencement altitude of 5,500 feet, then through the 4,500-foot LSALT for the Ambon-Baucau airway, again without any comment from any of the crewmembers, continuing the pattern observed in the briefing. Evidently they had no intention to observe any of the minimum altitudes.
In the background, First Officer Matvienko made his 25th and final unsuccessful effort to hail Baucau Tower.
As they neared the airport, still flying approximately south-southwest and maintaining a height of 400 meters (1,312 ft) above field elevation, Dyatlov waited for his GPS to show that they were crossing the runway centerline. “We’ll check how we will path over the runway using my data,” he said at 14:53, after which he added, “We’ll take into consideration (unintelligible) on GPS.”
Moments later, Dyatlov tried calling the tower himself, and no doubt to the crew’s astonishment, this time someone replied. An off-duty United Nations ATS officer who happened to be passing the ATS station heard the navigator’s call and picked up the radio, into which he said, “Baucau traffic services, at your discretion for landing.”
Dyatlov acknowledged that they would descend and land at their discretion, then signed off. None of the pilots suggested asking for the current QNH or QFE setting, nor did they ask for any weather information, such as visibility or cloud ceiling. The flight crew would have had no knowledge of the weather conditions at the field because the Timor-Leste government had issued neither an aerodrome forecast nor a METAR (aviation routine weather report) for Baucau, so the only way to find out the current conditions was to ask someone on the ground. Unfortunately, this opportunity was missed.
Just after 14:54, the flight reached the extended centerline of the runway as displayed on Dyatlov’s GPS, so he said “to the left 135 degrees,” referring to the runway heading shown on the Jeppesen chart, and Captain Shadrunov announced, “Turning.” However, by this point it was too late to avoid overshooting the depicted centerline, so the plane swung out almost 2 km right of the intended course. Dyatlov compensated by instructing Shadrunov to turn left further, to heading 105, in order to return to the centerline.
Completing this turn, Shadrunov declared “on heading,” and Dyatlov announced they were 1.5 km laterally from the centerline with a distance to run of 3 km. Moments later he added, “1,000 meters laterally, distance is 3, to the right on landing.” Shadrunov replied “turning,” beginning a right turn back to heading 135, but before he could complete the turn, the runway suddenly appeared through the mist, almost directly beneath them. On the ground below, a witness took a photograph of the Il-76 passing overhead, its ghostly form partly shrouded in clouds, testifying to the poor conditions that hid the runway from the crew until the last moment.
Considering that Dyatlov had just announced 3 km to run, the abrupt appearance of the runway was completely unexpected, and required investigation.
It turns out that Dyatlov had programmed the runway threshold and centerline into the GPS based on the coordinates and runway heading provided on the Jeppesen chart. As I already mentioned, the runway heading on the chart was wrong — it was 139 degrees, not 135 — but the airport position itself was even more seriously askew. The coordinates on the chart put the runway 2.38 km (1.29 NM) southeast of its actual position, which meant that for a flight coming in from the northwest, the runway would have appeared beneath the airplane 2.38 km earlier than the crew was expecting.
One aspect worth noting is that the chart showed the location of the NDB correctly. The depiction of the airport environs had the NDB positioned northwest of the runway, when in fact it was abeam the runway’s midpoint, but as I just said, it was the runway position that was wrong, not the NDB. Therefore, if the pilots had been navigating with reference to the NDB, as envisioned by the runway 14 NDB approach procedure, the incorrect airport coordinates would have been irrelevant.
Here I want to stop and explain what these pilots were actually doing, in context. While this was only a test approach, it was still an approach. Regardless of whether the pilots intend to land, an instrument flight rules (IFR) flight through instrument meteorological conditions (IMC) in uncontrolled airspace must adhere at all times to either the sector minimum altitude or a published instrument procedure. There are very good reasons why pilots aren’t supposed to go rambling all over the place below the MSA in IMC like they own the place.
However, throughout the late 1990s and 2000s, as GPS technology became more accurate, some flight crews who operated into poorly equipped or underserved airports began to fly so-called “user-generated GPS approaches.”
Of course, GPS approaches are real and they’re used all the time; there are several types (RNAV, RNP, etc.), but the basic idea behind all of them is that the approach is flown with reference to a set of published GPS coordinates instead of or in addition to radio navigational aids. Today, underequipped airports commonly have a published RNAV or RNP approach procedure because these approach types don’t require any ground infrastructure. In 2003, however, this was less common.
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A published GPS-based approach has been thoroughly reviewed and tested in order to ensure that it provides adequate terrain separation, possesses appropriate minimums, and so on. Such an approach will also be included in digital databases to allow aircraft equipped with a flight management system to fly the approach automatically. This is also the case for all types of instrument approaches, but GPS approaches are unique in that it’s possible for the flight crew to invent a new GPS approach from whole cloth, because there’s nothing stopping a pilot from plopping down a bunch of GPS waypoints leading up to the runway and then attempting to follow them. Several accidents have been attributed to these unapproved techniques, especially during the period before RNAV/RNP approaches became universal. For another example of a user-generated approach created by generating waypoints using a flight management system, see my 2020 article on Airblue flight 202.*
*Note: This article is on the older side and my research and general knowledge may not have been as good as they are today. I have not gone back to review it for errors or bad takes.
In this case, Dyatlov was creating a user-generated GPS approach without the benefit of a flight management system by simply calling out the lateral offset and distance to run between the GPS position of the aircraft and the GPS position of the runway, which as we now know was incorrect. And that’s precisely why you don’t make up your own approach procedures.
At this point, the pilots could have decided to just fly the published NDB approach, which would have resulted in a safe landing. They could even have cross-checked the visual position of the runway against the position of the NDB as indicated on their ADFs, observed that the two were co-located, and then generated a new GPS approach with reference to the NDB, which still would have been a massive violation of the very concept of standard operating procedures, but would probably have also resulted in a safe landing. But instead, the pilots did neither of those things.
Having established that the runway position was not where he thought it was, Dyatlov told Shadrunov to roll out on the assumed runway heading of 135 degrees and climb to a height of 500 meters (1,640 ft) above the field elevation (about 3,350 ft or 1,021 m above sea level) in order to make another approach. This was not the published missed approach procedure for runway 14, which was to fly out on the approach heading of 146˚, climb to 2,800 ft above sea level (853 m), then turn left back to the NDB while climbing to the initial approach altitude of 5,500 ft (1,676 m). The correct missed approach procedure had been part of Shadrunov’s approach briefing, but he casually disregarded it now.
After reaching 500 meters, Shadrunov began a left turn to reverse course and try again. As they passed about 5 kilometers abeam the runway on the downwind leg, Dyatlov asked whether the pilots could see the runway to their left, and Shadrunov replied that he could not.
“What is lateral?” Shadrunov asked.
“Lateral is 4.8 [kilometers],” Dyatlov replied. Shadrunov then instructed the flight engineer to extend the landing gear, flaps, and slats in anticipation of an approach.
At 14:58, Dyatlov said “Let’s [go] to the left,” and Shadrunov turned left onto the base leg of the circuit. As he did so, Dyatlov informed them that they were 8 kilometers radial distance from the runway, and 4 kilometers lateral distance. He then guided Shadrunov through the turn, telling him when to turn and when to stop, while calling out their distance every kilometer.
At a reported distance of 7 km, Shadrunov began a step-down descent to a height of 300 meters; however, their actual distance from the threshold at this point was less than 5 kilometers. With this discrepancy still uncorrected, they rolled onto final approach and aligned with the supposed runway centerline of 135 degrees. But shortly after Dyatlov called out 4 kilometers, First Officer Matvienko apparently spotted the runway through the fog and announced, “threshold.”
“Threshold,” Shadrunov repeated. “We already passed [the] runway.”
At this point, they had not yet overflown the runway, which still lay a little over a kilometer ahead of them. Nevertheless, it was obvious that they were too high to effect a landing.
“That means the data was not right, go to the left,” Dyatlov instructed. He then hastily added, “I took 4 kilometers correction.”
What Dyatlov meant here was that he was now changing the coordinates of the runway on his GPS device, moving them 4 kilometers to the north to account for the apparent discrepancy in the runway position. However, as I mentioned earlier, the actual runway position was only 2.38 km from the erroneous position on the Jeppesen chart, so 4 km was an overcorrection. Investigators believed that Dyatlov interpreted Shadrunov’s statement, “We already passed the runway,” to mean that they were over the runway at that time, when in fact the threshold was still ahead of them. This statement was made at a distance between 3 and 4 km from the Jeppesen runway position, thus leading Dyatlov to apply a 4 km correction. However, it’s not entirely clear to me why Dyatlov, who we know was seated in the navigator’s station (because that’s where the GPS was installed), did not himself observe that the runway still lay more than 1,500 meters ahead. Ensconced in a bubble of windows, he should have had an excellent view ahead and below the aircraft.
In any case, having clearly missed the runway, Shadrunov initiated another missed approach, instructing Flight Engineer Busygin to retract the gear and flaps again. As he climbed again to a height of 500 meters, he said, addressing Dyatlov by his familiar name, “Sasha, that threshold was the runway on which we should land.”
“I understand,” Dyatlov replied.
“We approached a little bit actively,” Shadrunov added.
“So, I understood to minus 3 kilometers approximately, even 4, we’ll descend by stepped,” Dyatlov explained. This time, with his corrected runway position estimate, he was confident they could descend early enough to land.
The cockpit was largely quiet as Shadrunov steered the plane onto the downwind leg, broken only by his instructions to put the gear and flaps back down. This continued until about 15:03, when Dyatlov said, “On to left turn and 400 meters maintaining.” A few seconds later he added, “We can descend to 200.”
“OK, descending,” Shadrunov acknowledged.
Continuing through the base turn and onto final, Dyatlov regularly provided GPS position information.
“Lateral 2, distance is 6 kilometers, Descending 250 meters.”
“Lateral 600 meters, distance is 5…”
“Above [by] 60 meters.”
“Flaps and slats,” Shadrunov called out.
“Turning on landing heading,” Dyatlov instructed, and Shadrunov began the final turn onto heading 135. This heading was still erroneous, with the proper approach heading being 146 and the runway heading being 139, but none of the pilots had observed this discrepancy so far.
“Now we are crossing landing heading, distance is… ah… in 4 kilometers,” Dyatlov continued.
Shadrunov slightly overshot the landing course to the right and began to correct. “On the right 200 meters, distance is 3,” Dyatlov called out. “Have this heading, distance is 3.5.”
“On radio altimeter 300 we have, continue descending.”
“Distance now is 3.”
“Distance is 2 kilometers.”
“We are flying above again,” he admonished.
If we imagine a normal glide path to the location where Dyatlov believed the threshold to be, then they should have been at only 100 meters above the field by this point, while their actual height was about 200 meters. However, the minimum descent height for the NDB approach was 162 meters, so any further descent below this altitude shouldn’t have been attempted until the runway was in sight, which it was not. This fact was not mentioned by the crew, who had made no mention of any minimum altitudes at any point during the flight, nor had they devised any minimum descent height for their improvised GPS approach. And taking into account Dyatlov’s overcorrection, which placed his imagined threshold 1.62 km (0.9 NM) short of its actual location, the puzzle pieces of disaster were starting to fall into place.
Then, in response to Dyatlov’s report that they were too high, Captain Shadrunov increased the rate of descent to 18 meters per second (3,543 feet per minute), which was extremely excessive in such close proximity to the ground — so much so that it’s hard to believe he chose this descent rate intentionally. Investigators concluded that he probably misjudged his input and then failed to detect the error because his attention was focused outside the aircraft in an effort to spot the runway, and not inside at his instruments.
This is a classic mistake that has killed numerous flight crews throughout history, and it stems from the very human desire to see where we’re going and to get to the destination, but it’s contrary to the way pilots are trained to fly instrument approaches. Although there exist various standard distributions of tasks during a non-precision approach, under the “traditional*” arrangement it is expected that the pilot flying the aircraft will not search for visual reference to the runway until the pilot monitoring calls “visual.” The pilot monitoring is therefore responsible for acquiring visual reference in addition to monitoring the instruments, while the pilot flying exclusively uses the instruments to control the flight path. This ensures that the transition from instrument to visual flying doesn’t occur before a visual reference has actually been established.
*Note: “Traditional” is contrasted here with the “monitored approach” concept, which is increasingly popular around the world. Under the monitored approach concept, the pilot monitoring takes over as pilot flying and lands the airplane upon acquiring visual reference. Scientific studies show that this concept may reduce the risk of transitioning to visual flight prematurely, continuing an unsafe approach, or making a go-around decision below the decision height.
Regardless, once Captain Shadrunov initiated the excessively steep descent, First Officer Matvienko should have monitored the instruments and called out the deviation, allowing Shadrunov to correct. Unfortunately, this didn’t occur, and we don’t know the exact reason why — but it has to be kept in mind that this error occurred in a context in which Shadrunov and Dyatlov were intentionally violating multiple standard operating procedures, rendering it unclear which violations should be called to their attention. Ideally, all violations should be called out, even if intentional, but in an operating context where SOPs are barely even a suggestion, that kind of behavior is difficult to expect. Additionally, Matvienko was a passive observer to the entire flight thus far, and it does not seem like he was empowered to comment on the captain’s piloting, nor did he necessarily feel that that was his role. With a Russian aviation background in 2003, it was unlikely that any of the pilots had received much training on crew resource management, which is explicitly intended to alleviate this kind of imbalance.
Therefore, because of Dyatlov’s mistaken runway coordinates, they were descending toward a point that was 1.62 km short of the actual runway, and now Shadrunov was descending so quickly that they would have little time to react when they broke out of the clouds and realized the error. Disaster was now almost inevitable.
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At this point, Captain Shadrunov might still have realized his mistake if not for a series of confounding factors that finally sealed the fate of RDPL-34141 and her crew.
The first of these was that the weather conditions in the approach area were markedly worsening, with witnesses reporting fog or mist with a forward visibility of only 200 to 300 meters. This would have prevented Shadrunov from recognizing their excessive descent rate by using visual references.
The next factor was a misunderstanding on the flight deck. When Dyatlov told him to increase the descent rate, Shadrunov declared, “increased,” but Flight Engineer Busygin thought he was commanding an increase in engine power. This might have been a sign that Busygin was aware of the situation and was anticipating a missed approach, priming him to expect a command to increase thrust, but we will never know for sure. If he had such concerns, he never voiced them.
In response to the perceived command, Busygin leaned forward and push the thrust levers forward, calling out “Increased.”
“Descending,” Dyatlov confirmed.
Within seconds, Shadrunov realized Busygin’s error and said, “No, I increased vertical speed.” He then grabbed the thrust levers and reduced power back to where it was before.
During those critical seconds, the aircraft descended through the MDH of 162 meters without comment from any of the crew. The distraction posed by the flight engineer’s erroneous thrust increase may have prevented Shadrunov from realizing that they were now flying too low.
It was at this moment that the third and final factor reared its ugly head. With the plane descending rapidly toward the ground, the flight path now met the activation criteria for the “sink rate” and “pull up” warnings from the Il-76’s ground proximity warning system, or GPWS — but no warning was heard.
Investigators examined a number of possible reasons for the conspicuous absence of this unmistakable warning. One early possibility was that the cockpit voice recorder simply hadn’t picked it up, because the Soviet CVR on the Il-76 only recorded audio when a crewmember spoke over the cockpit intercom, and for 15 seconds afterward. The CVR didn’t have a cockpit area microphone to continuously capture ambient sounds, so if the GPWS had sounded more than 15 seconds since the last statement by a pilot, it would not have been captured. However, while this was a poor design that didn’t meet ICAO standards, it was not the reason for the missing warning, because there were no gaps in conversation longer than 15 seconds during the final approach, and thus no audio during this phase could be missing.
Another possibility was a malfunction of the radio altimeter, from which the GPWS extracted the aircraft’s height above terrain. The flight data recorder did not record the aircraft’s radio altitude, and a note reading “no altitude from RALT” was found attached to the FDR cassette. However, statements by the pilots indicate that they were able to read the radio altimeter indications during the flight, so this was ruled to be a malfunction of the FDR itself, and not the altimeter.
With these possibilities ruled out, the only real remaining explanation for the missing warning was a malfunction of the GPWS unit itself. However, the unit was never recovered, and the cause of the malfunction, if there was one, remains unknown.
Had the warning sounded, Captain Shadrunov would have had about 8.7 seconds to avoid ground impact. This isn’t a lot, and the plane might have crashed anyway unless he performed a very aggressive escape maneuver — but without the warning, there was no hope whatsoever.
It’s also worth pointing out that if the procedure on the Il-76 had been to set the captain’s radio altimeter bug to the MDH, and had this procedure been followed, then they would have received a “below preselected altitude” alert at 162 meters. This alert may have increased the pilots’ situational awareness as to their vertical profile. However, as you hopefully recall, the actual procedure was to set the bug to 60 meters, and even this rather useless step was never performed. Had the alert gone off at 60 meters, with the plane descending at 18 meters per second, there would not have been adequate time to avoid ground impact, but as we will soon see, the consequences may have been somewhat reduced.
Unfortunately, none of this occurred, and disaster was assured.
During the final seconds, the CVR recorded Shadrunov calling out, “Speed is 250, 250,” followed by Dyatlov announcing, “Descending, distance is about 2.”
“OK,” Shadrunov confirmed.
Suddenly, the plane broke out of the clouds, and the crew spotted the ground — but it was too late. Just under three seconds from impact, First Officer Matvienko shouted, “Ach, increased altitude!”
Both pilots immediately pulled back on their controls to climb, but no one increased thrust, hampering the escape attempt. Matvienko announced, “Recovering,” but his was the last word recorded by the CVR.
At 15:05 and 34 seconds, RDPL-34141 touched down in the grass 1,877 meters short of runway 14. Within a split second of wheels-down, the left wing struck several large trees and the landing gear impacted a fence, causing severe damage to both. The huge jet yawed and rolled violently to the left as the left wing folded upward and the airplane turned inverted, sliding upside down across a field. The entire forward fuselage, including the cockpit, then slammed headlong into a serrated limestone rock outcropping, which sliced through the plane like an unholy cheese grater, rendering aircraft and occupants alike into small, confetti-like fragments.
As the disintegrating airplane continued forward, fire billowed from its riven fuel tanks, and the inverted right wing clipped a partially constructed house, whose owner was inside at the time but miraculously escaped injury. The remaining fuselage then broke into several pieces, which tumbled to a halt a few dozen meters further on, surrounded by fire.
At Cakung Airport, UN personnel witnessed a huge explosion in the fog short of the runway, and firefighting vehicles were dispatched to the site as quickly as possible, arriving within five minutes of the crash. But aside from tamping down the flames, there was little they could do. All six crewmembers had perished on impact, and in fact so horrific was the destruction of the cockpit area that some of the victims were never positively identified.
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In many war-torn countries, like present day Sudan, the crash of a non-scheduled cargo flight run by a dubious operator would never be investigated at all. But Timor-Leste was no longer a war zone, and with the United Nations still more or less running the show, the diplomatic gears immediately started to turn. Within hours of the accident, Timor-Leste’s fledgling Ministry of Transport, Communications, and Public Works sent a request for help to the Australian Transport Safety Bureau, which sent a team of air crash investigators to Baucau to gather the evidence and determine the cause. The investigation was technically run under the auspices of the Timor-Leste Ministry of Transport, but since the country did not have any air crash investigators, the investigation was entirely conducted by Australian experts. Timor-Leste’s willingness to ask for help and Australia’s commitment to openness ensured that this investigation was transparent and that its results were released to the public. Without that dedication this article could not have been written.
The investigation proved to be a challenge unlike any other that the Australian investigators had faced. The aircraft involved was enormous, the investigation team was abnormally small, and no one on it knew the first thing about the Il-76, beyond what was available on the internet. The investigators had to familiarize themselves with detailed Il-76 design specifications and operating procedures provided by the aircraft’s owners and operator, followed by a tour of a real Il-76, before they could even begin to piece together what went wrong. On top of this, the team also had to record and analyze a vast and complex wreckage field while operating out of a town that had almost no services, forcing the investigation to achieve full self-sufficiency in terms of basic needs like food and electricity.
Adding even further to the burden on the investigators was the complex ownership structure of the aircraft and the sheer number of countries involved. In a paper about the investigation written after the fact, Barter et al. plainly laid out this challenge: “With the increasing use of charter aircraft registered in third world counties to transport cargo and passengers, combined with the large number of ex-Soviet Union aircraft and aircrew on the market, extraordinarily complex ownership and responsibility arrangements have developed which make the task of investigating accidents backgrounds for aircraft maintenance, flight crew compliance and who should join in the investigation, difficult.”
Nevertheless, the investigation was able to come to the technical conclusions I’ve already presented in this article, as well as providing the framework for my efforts to identify the companies involved, even though the final report did not name any of the companies.
The investigation also raised several points of analysis that I want to return to, in relation to both the background of the flight and the sequence of events itself.
Investigators concluded that while the major causes of RDPL-34141’s controlled flight into terrain included the flight crew’s decision to conduct a user-generated GPS approach and the captain’s inappropriate use of a high descent rate close to the ground, a number of other factors also narrowed the available margin of error and brought the risk of ground contact from likely to virtually certain. All of these factors are things I discussed in the preceding sections, but now I want to quantify what role they may have played, if any.
As you may recall, the captain had not set his radio altimeter bug to warn when descending below 60 meters; the crew was using an estimated altimeter setting that resulted in a barometric altitude reading that was 20 meters too high; and thrust was not increased during the go-around attempt. Had these errors not occurred, either individually or in concert, then the recovery attempt could have been started fractionally earlier and with greater efficiency, and the aircraft may have cleared the trees, fence, and rock outcropping before impacting the ground, possibly rendering the crash survivable for some or all of the occupants. These were tiny margins, little more than a rounding error, but as I said earlier, aviation safety is about margins. The truth is that these “rounding errors” stemmed from preventable procedural violations that might have cost crewmembers their lives.
At the same time, margins were also reduced by crew decision-making earlier in the flight. The decision not to ask Dili tower or the off-duty Baucau controller for the local barometric pressure and visibility decreased the pilots’ situational awareness and instrument accuracy, and their decision not to establish a minimum descent height for their improvised approach increased the risk of descending into terrain. The decision not to use the NDB to cross-check the GPS coordinates of the airport after discovering the incorrect Jeppesen data also prevented the crew from accurately judging the location of the runway.
After the accident, several changes were made to address deficiencies that increased the risk of landing at Baucau. The Jeppesen company withdrew its erroneous Baucau approach charts and ordered all copies to be destroyed; a NOTAM was issued warning flight crews that the Baucau QNH was not available outside of troop rotation days; Comoro Approach in Dili was established as the central point of coordination for all aircraft in Timor-Leste airspace; and the Timor-Leste CAD banned all non-UN aircraft from making instrument approaches to Baucau. But none of the deficiencies addressed by these changes would have mattered if the crew had followed the published approach procedure.
The reason why the crew did not fly the approved NDB approach was never determined. Although the NDB was found to be inoperative after the crash, evidence clearly showed that it was working during the accident flight. Alternatively, the crew might have been trying to save time, since the flight was 9 hours behind schedule and there might have been pressure not to increase that number. Colleagues of the accident crew who posted on the Russian pilots’ forum made unverifiable claims that the pilots on these types of flights were frequently expected to pay for the fuel cost of a diversion, among other coercive tactics intended to promote on-time arrivals. However, it seems to me that the flyover and circle actually performed by the crew would have saved little time, if any, relative to completing the approved procedure.
One other possibility is that this crew flew user-generated GPS approaches habitually, perhaps because they saw GPS as more reliable than the navigational aids at remote airfields, or because it saved time at other airports, even if it didn’t at Baucau. But we will never know for sure.
The questionable decisions described above were made despite the fact that the flight had a very high base level of risk of controlled flight into terrain (CFIT), as measured by the Flight Safety Foundation’s CFIT risk calculator. This tool measures the risk of a CFIT event on a particular flight based on a number of quantifiable input values, and was used by the investigation into this accident to put the events into context. What they found was that even assuming the highest possible scores for the operator’s corporate culture, flight standards, and training, the base CFIT risk for this flight was high due to the lack of aids at the destination, the weather, and the terrain. Investigators pointed out that performing a simple risk analysis like this before a non-scheduled flight can help the crew make more cautious decisions.
In the actual event, the flight crew showed a deep-seated disregard for standard operating procedures that further increased the CFIT risk until an accident became inevitable. However, it’s worth pointing out that this kind of disregard was hardly unique to these individuals. While it can arise at any airline with a lax operating environment where safety and discipline are not given adequate attention, it was especially common among Russian overseas flight crews during the late Soviet and early post-Soviet periods, and I do think there’s more to it than just the company they worked for. Having studied this period of Russian history in an academic sociological context (see my master’s thesis on the breakup of Aeroflot and its effect on Russian aviation safety), there was a marked nihilistic streak that could be seen at all levels of society, including domestic aviation, but perhaps especially so among post-Soviet flight crews forced to seek work abroad. Accounts from people who worked in that environment and accident reports from the time period both highlight a profound sense of detachment, rooted in what I believe was a largely subconscious belief, among pilots and non-pilots alike, that they as individuals did not have real agency, and that if bad things happened to them, then that was just fate. And sometimes it was, but just as often in aviation, that very detachment creates the conditions for “fate” to deal a bad hand.
Today, this tendency has largely faded away, tied as it was to that particularly chaotic and desperate period of Russian history. But its mark is, in my opinion, visible in this accident. These pilots had families back home, they had decades of aviation experience, they were deeply familiar with the Il-76. They, like all pilots flying in the post-Soviet shadow industry, knew that what they were doing was inherently dangerous. Some, probably all, had lost colleagues in prior accidents. And yet they still allowed themselves to make unnecessarily risky decisions. And in the corners of the Russian-language internet where Russian overseas pilots gathered after the crash, the discussion was not about the causes of the tragedy, or how it could be avoided in the future — no, the consensus was “there but for the grace of god go I.”
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Although this mentality likely contributed to faulty decision-making, a significant part of the responsibility for the crew’s poor discipline necessarily arises from the operating environment created by the companies that employed them. However, the investigation was unable to meaningfully examine the company culture of the operator, probably because there was none to speak of. As far as I can tell, Euro-Asia Aviation was a paper company that was only ever intended to operate a few dozen flights, then disappear after a few months or a year; and as such its operational control over the accident flight would have been minimal.
Nevertheless, there are a few things that can be said about this topic. For instance, investigators did obtain the operations manual issued by Euro-Asia Aviation, which they found did not contain detailed instructions related to the SOPs for each phase of the flight, departure and approach briefings, altitude awareness, route familiarization, the stabilized approach concept, limitations on descent rate near the ground, weather conditions required to commence or continue an approach, crew workload management, or CFIT avoidance. The absence of SOPs in so many crucial areas no doubt hindered the flight crew’s ability to operate the aircraft in the safest possible manner.
The investigation also found that Laos’s ability to oversee the airline was virtually non-existent. Earlier in this article, I mentioned that the Laos DCA had not properly issued the flight crew with the licenses required by ICAO, nor had the country notified ICAO of any differences between local licensing rules and ICAO rules. But the report also noted that the Laos DCA didn’t have any personnel qualified to conduct flight tests or supervise flight test examiners as part of the process of certificating an aircraft or airline, and in fact the DCA’s entire Flight Operations and Inspection section had only one employee. There was no evidence that the Laos DCA had performed any operational inspections of Euro-Asia Aviation, nor was it clear whether such an inspection was even possible. An ICAO audit of Laos and follow-up audit in 2002 found that the country did not have a viable system of compliance or enforcement of aviation regulations.
In my opinion, Laos may have been selected as the country of registration for RDPL-34141 precisely because of its lack of capability. In fact, after all my research, I have come to believe that the ownership structure of this aircraft and its sister ship RDPL-34138 was specifically designed to shield the true owners from liability.
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As I discussed earlier in this article, there exists a global shadow industry of fly-by-night cargo operators that engage in a mixture of legitimate business and criminal activities, including smuggling of valuable goods, human beings, and illegal arms. The heyday of this industry was arguably in the late 1990s and 2000s, in part due to the glut of ex-Soviet aircraft and air crews available during that period, but it still exists today, and the Il-76 is still its biggest workhorse — and its most dangerous. In fact, as many as four Il-76 cargo planes have been destroyed in crashes or combat in 2025 in Sudan alone.*
*Give or take a few. Data is sketchy.
The owners of these shadow aircraft usually broker deals under the table, only to distance themselves from the contract by means of a spider web of leases and sub-leases between short-lived “paper” airlines. Each airline only exists for a year or two, maybe a little less, maybe a little more. Where possible, the airlines are registered in countries that have lax registration requirements, little or no ability to monitor airline activities, and little or no public disclosure of company information. Laos is such a country, and during my research I found evidence that several large cargo transport aircraft were registered in Laos on behalf of obscure and short-lived companies during the early 2000s.
In the case of RDPL-34141, the actions of the paper companies demonstrated how this setup could effectively shield the owners. The Sharjah-based owners leased the aircraft to Euro-Asia Aviation with the stipulation that the latter could not sub-lease the aircraft without the owner’s written permission, only for Euro-Asia Aviation to turn around and do exactly that, sub-leasing the aircraft to another paper airline from Cambodia, another flag of convenience, with the approval of the Laos DCA, just days after the original lease agreement was signed. However, because no written permission for the sub-lease occurred, when the plane crashed the buck stopped with Euro-Asia Aviation. Euro-Asia Aviation then in turn claimed that the Cambodian sub-lessee Astro Air had requested landing rights at Baucau without authorization, punting the responsibility even farther down the chain. As far as I can tell the investigators never spoke to anyone from Astro Air and I found no evidence of this company’s existence outside of the half dozen flights operated by RDPL-34141 in the month before the crash. In fact, that was probably the point.
In my opinion, one would not set up this kind of “unauthorized” lease and sub-lease unless the intention was to obscure the involvement of the aircraft’s owners. That’s not normally something that’s done as a precaution in case of an accident. It’s what you do if you’re worried that the plane will be caught carrying something illegal.
Now, as far as I can tell, there was nothing illegal on board RDPL-34141 when it crashed. I spoke to a UN pilot who visited the scene in the years after the crash and reported that the Timor Telecom equipment was still there, scattered about in the field, confirming that the cargo manifest accurately reflected at least the majority of the contents. Furthermore, there was no reason to smuggle arms into Timor-Leste in 2003 because the war was over and the country was still largely run by the United Nations. Timor-Leste is also not a notable producer or consumer of illegal goods.
My personal belief is therefore that the accident flight was a perfectly legal charter operated by a chain of companies that were also involved, or were planning to become involved, in illegal or gray-area contracts.
This wasn’t my first time researching the aviation shadow industry in the early 2000s. For our podcast episode on the 2003 crash of Union des Transportes Africains de Guinée (UTA) flight 141, my cohosts and I dived into the history of that aircraft and found that not only was it possibly smuggling cash intended for Hezbollah, but that the aircraft owner, a Palestinian-American man named Imad Saba, ran a network of “paper airlines” out of his operational base in Sharjah, UAE. A paper describing Saba’s activities in the UAE identified him as the owner of East/West Cargo (later renamed Air West), which was believed to be part of the arms smuggling network of Viktor Bout, the notorious weapons dealer who inspired the film Lord of War starring Nicholas Cage. You might also remember him as the convicted arms trafficker that the US traded with Russia for basketball player Brittney Griner in December 2022. He was a prolific operator of paper airlines, a vast smuggling empire that he ran from his base Sharjah until he was forced out in 2004.
Being aware of this background, and being aware that the owners of RDPL-34141 were also based in Sharjah, I set out to find whether there was any connection, no matter how tenuous, between this aircraft and the companies and individuals I identified during my research into UTA flight 141. And to my surprise, I actually found one. But first, I had to identify the true owner of the aircraft — the entity referred to in the accident report as the “Sharjah-based company.”
At first, I wasn’t sure whether it was possible to identify this company. Databases of aircraft operators and registrations were invaluable in confirming the names and histories of the other companies involved, but they don’t generally list an aircraft’s owner unless the owner is also the operator. But once again, it was the Russian pilots’ forum posts from 2003 that came in handy. Multiple commenters on that thread independently identified the pilots’ employer as something called Express Avia FZE, and since the accident report stated that the aircraft owner and the pilots’ employer were the same entity, I realized that this was probably the company I was looking for.
The title “FZE” identifies a company registered in a United Arab Emirates Free Trade Zone. The purpose of a free trade zone is to create a duty-free area to facilitate transit of goods, ease investment, and encourage foreign companies to operate locally. While free trade zones exist all over the world, the UAE free trade zones specifically offer a number of benefits to companies that register there, including but not limited to exemption from import and export taxes, full foreign ownership of the business, full repatriation of profits to the country of ownership, corporate tax exemptions for up to 50 years, no personal income tax, and various other forms of support. While many legitimate businesses are registered in UAE free trade zones, the European Union has also identified such zones as hotbeds of criminal activity, including “tax evasion, laundering of stolen goods, and trafficking of people and illicit substances.”
Sharjah Airport lies within the Sharjah free trade zone, making it an ideal base for individuals operating gray-zone and illegal cargo operations. That’s precisely why Viktor Bout and Imad Saba were both based there at the time of the Timor-Leste accident. In fact, Richard Chichakli, the government-appointed head of the Sharjah free trade zone at the time of its founding in 1995, was an associate of Viktor Bout. He left that post in 1996, allegedly to become the chief financial officer for several of Bout’s paper airlines (an allegation that Chichakli denies).
By 2003, more than 160 cargo airlines and freight forwarders were based at Sharjah Airport. I found that Express Avia FZE, the company identified as the owner of RDPL-34141, was one of them. In fact, a UAE company registry still lists it as a Sharjah-registered company, along with a telephone number. As far as I can tell this is the only remaining internet presence of Express Avia FZE, if it ever had any.
I wasn’t able to find the individuals that owned Express Avia FZE, so that line of inquiry ended up proving only that the owners of the ill-fated aircraft were indeed based in the hive of scum and villainy that is the Sharjah FTZ. Instead, it was the aircraft registries that provided a more direct link.
RDPL-34141’s sister aircraft was RDPL-34138, which appears to have been the only other aircraft ever operated by Euro-Asia Aviation. Records show that in July 2003, six months after the crash in Timor-Leste, Euro-Asia Aviation essentially disappeared off the map, and RDPL-34138 was re-registered in Sudan to none other than East/West Cargo, the Bout network airline allegedly owned by Imad Saba. A different Il-76 belonging to that airline later crashed near Khartoum while carrying “humanitarian aid” during the height of the Darfur genocide in 2005.
The truth is that a link of this type isn’t surprising; the only surprising aspect as that I, an amateur journalist at best, was able to find it. During this period, there was in Sharjah what Douglas Farah described in his book, Merchant of Death, as a “cutthroat expatriate community of Russian air entrepreneurs, pilots, crewmen, and mechanics.” All of these people knew each other, worked together, and competed against one another. So even if the owners of Express Avia FZE didn’t answer to Imad Saba and Viktor Bout, it’s virtually certain that they had some kind of working relationship, at least enough to facilitate the sale or lease of RDPL-34138.
Does this revelation change the way I feel about the pilots of RDPL-34141? The answer is, not necessarily. The fact that their employer was almost certainly involved in an illegal smuggling operation, about which they were almost assuredly aware, doesn’t change the simultaneous fact that this “cutthroat expatriate community” existed because there were few jobs for pilots in Russia. But even though Shadrunov and Dyatlov and Matvienko and all the others were probably there out of desperation, the knowledge that they were part of a labor network that was also being used to support civil wars and even genocides must loom large over their memory. The violence wasn’t their fault, but it is plausible that they tolerated it.
And yet, from an aviation safety perspective, that question doesn’t really matter. The crash didn’t happen because of the moral character of the pilots, which we are not in a position to fully judge. It happened because the entire industry within which they were operating did not and still does not prioritize safety, a disregard that likewise infected the flight crew as they made their fateful approach to Baucau. And how could safety ever be a priority, when the purpose of these airlines was to generate blood money? One starts to see why it’s easier to just not think about the shadow industry at all, like most respectable aviation experts. Still, I am drawn to these stories like a moth to a flame.
Standing upon the conclusion to this story, looking out across the panorama of what I have written, I have to conclude that maybe none of it matters. The lessons of this crash are ones the legitimate airline industry learned decades ago, and the shadow industry isn’t interested in learning, so why pretend that I wrote this for any reason other than my own insatiable desire to follow the rabbit hole all the way down? Or is that just the post-Soviet nihilist in me talking? Regardless, I hope that you, the reader, learned something, whether it was about aviation history, or Timor-Leste, or sketchy Russians. So I thank you for reading my 15,000-word treatise on a forgotten cargo plane crash from 2003, and may you never find yourself in that strange, lawless world, into which we are afforded only the occasional glimpse, illuminated on the walls of Plato’s Cave by the light of a burning aircraft.
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You can also see my work on Petter Hornfeldt’s YouTube channel “Mentour Pilot,” where I’m employed as a script writer and researcher.
Don’t forget to listen to Controlled Pod Into Terrain, my podcast (with slides!), where I discuss aerospace disasters with my cohosts Ariadne and J! Check out our channel here.
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