TABSO Flight 101 - Events

Events

On the day of the accident, flight LZ101 was operated by an Il-18B airliner registered LZ-BEN. It had been manufactured in January 1964 (constructor's number 7101) and had been accepted by TABSO on 22 January that year. By the time of the accident, it had not been involved in any incidents and had been maintained in accordance with the manufacturer's schedules.

The crew comprised Commander (captain) Lubomir Todorov Antonov, 41 years old, with 11,959 total flight hours. He was among TABSO's most senior Il-18 commanders, having gained command of the type in July 1962, a month or so after its inauguration into his airline's service. Antonov had passed a proficiency test two days earlier. He was very familiar with Bratislava Airport, having operated there on 11 prior occasions. Second Pilot (first officer) was Svetoslav Dimitrov Shakadanov, 36, with 5975 flight hours. He had passed a proficiency check the previous day. Navigator Officer was First Class Specialist Navigator Slavi Stefanov Tomakov. Radio-Telegraphy Officer was Nikola Aleksandrov Tasev, 36-years-old, with 3160 flight hours. On-Board Mechanical Officer was Stoyan Todorov Rangelov, 42, with 3602 flight hours. Cabin crew comprised Stewardesses Maria Ivanova, Svetla Georgieva (also known as Svetla Marinova, married 18 days earlier to Ivan Slavkov) and Violina Stoichkova.

The 74 passengers on board Flight LZ101 were of 12 nationalities: Bulgarians, Argentinians, Britons, Chileans, Czechoslovaks, Germans, Hondurans, Hungarians, Japanese, Soviets, Swiss and Tunisians. Among them were Bulgarian opera soloist Katya Popova, Bulgaria's ambassador to the German Democratic Republic, General Ivan Buchvarov and famous Honduran writer and journalist Ramón Amaya Amador. The diversity of nationalities was partly explained by the recent Ninth Congress of the BKP Bulgarian Communist Party, many of them having been delegated to it by foreign communist parties.

Flight LZ101 departed Budapest at 1146 hours CET. While it was en route, weather in Prague deteriorated. Commander Antonov elected to make a diversion to Bratislava Airport (today the M. R. Štefánik Airport), landing there at 1158hrs. By 1530 hrs, the weather in Prague had improved and Antonov decided to prepare to resume the flight. Bratislava Airport meteorologist Jan Popeleny briefed the Commander that medium to strong turbulence was expected above the Little Carpathians hills north-west of Bratislava.

By 1610 the flight had boarded and at 16:20:30 hrs, Antonov was given clearance to taxi to Runway 04 or Runway 31 at his discretion. (He chose to use Runway 31 whose extended centreline crossed the Little Carpathians.) At the same time, he was cleared to take off, to turn right, to overfly the Nitra radio beacon and to proceed to overhead Brno and on to Prague at 5100m/16700 ft. Meanwhile, an Il-14 airliner of Czechoslovak Airlines had taken off from Bratislava. In order to maintain separation between the slower Il-14 and his faster Il-18, Antonov was instructed to maintain a height of 300m/1000 ft until cleared to climb to his cruise altitude.

Flight LZ101 took off at 16:28 hrs in almost total darkness. Its departure was observed by air traffic controller Jaroslav Vadovic who reported that it had been normal. Shortly after reporting lift-off, LZ101 was instructed to turn right and contact the Bratislava Approach controller on a frequency of 120.9 MHz. The airliner failed to make the transition to Approach control. Some two minutes after departing Bratislava Airport, it crashed 8 kilometres (5.0 mi) from the airport into the Sakrakopec location in the foothills of the Little Carpathians, near Bratislava's borough of Rača. The area of impact was 288m/945 ft above the elevation of the airport. The aircraft struck the snow-covered ground while flying without any bank angle, at a speed of some 500 km/h/250 knots and while full take-off power was delivered by its engines. As it disintegrated over a period of 20 seconds, it left a swathe with a total length of 562 m and a width of between 30 m and 10 m, of which the main wreckage was located towards the end of a 265 m strip. A fierce fuel fire broke out but burned out fairly rapidly, mostly because fragments and fuel had dispersed over a large area.

The location of the crash was close to built-up areas of Bratislava and very popular with hikers. The accident was observed and heard by many local residents, including an off-duty air traffic controller who immediately telephoned his colleagues at the airport. The approach controllers at the airport had not, however, observed the accident, visually or on radar.

Because of difficult terrain, total darkness and poor weather, rescue services failed to find the scene of the crash for an hour and a half after being summoned. More delays and hesitation were caused by fears that the airliner might have been carrying radioactive isotopes. Within the next three days, the bodies of 74 of the 82 souls on board were recovered and transported to Bratislava for identification. Most victims had died instantly due to multiple injuries received during the impact, and most had severe burn marks sustained post-mortem.

Today, a timber cross marks the site where the aircraft's flightdeck came to a rest and 82 birch trees (one for each victim) mark the general location of the wreckage.