El accidente militar que España nunca superó | Yak-42 (2003) – Despresurizados [Especial 22 años]

Video from the channel Despresurizados about Yakovlev Yak-42, linked on its Above Ten Thousand entry. Duration: 52:41. Language: Spanish. Video type: Documentary.

Special episode of the Despresurizados podcast, published on the 22nd anniversary of the Yak-42 accident. It reconstructs UM Air flight 4230, which crashed on 26 May 2003 on Mount Pilav, on the outskirts of Trabzon (Turkey), killing 62 Spanish soldiers returning from Afghanistan. Besides the accident itself, the episode covers the contracting of the aircraft, the repatriation of the bodies, the judicial process and the State's later acknowledgment of responsibility.

The transport was contracted through NATO's NAMSA agency. The British intermediary Chapman Freeborn subcontracted it to Ukrainian Mediterranean Airlines, which had already received observations in European SAFA inspections. The aircraft, registration UR-42352, had left the Saratov plant in 1988 and had logged over 18,700 flight hours. Its cockpit voice recorder had been out of service for weeks. In fog, the crew had to make a VOR-DME approach, with no vertical guidance, to runway 29 at Trabzon. According to the Turkish report, the aircraft descended below minimum altitudes, turned early and struck the hillside with the gear and flaps extended. The report classified it as a controlled flight into terrain (CFIT) accident, caused by the crew's loss of situational awareness.

75 people died: the 62 soldiers, 12 Ukrainian crew members and one Belarusian citizen. The captain had around 6,150 flight hours, 2,490 of them on the Yak-42; the first officer had 247 hours on the type. During identification, 30 bodies were assigned without verification and without DNA testing, even though Turkish forensic examiners had recommended it. After 21 bodies were exhumed in November 2004, tests confirmed the errors. In 2009, the Audiencia Nacional convicted General Vicente Navarro of document falsification, sentencing him to three years, and two medical officers to 18 months; all three were later pardoned. In 2016, the Council of State ruled that the administration was liable, and in 2017 the Ministry of Defence officially acknowledged it.