Aeroflot Flight 6502 was a Soviet domestic passenger flight from Sverdlovsk (now Yekaterinburg) to Grozny, which crashed on 20 October 1986 due to pilot recklessness, killing seventy of the ninety-four passengers and crew on board.
The crew of the Tu-134A aircraft, serial number 62327 manufactured on 28 June 1979, consisted of pilot in command Alexander Kliuyev, co-pilot Gennady Zhirnov, navigating officer Ivan Mokhonko, flight engineer Kyuri Khamzatov and three flight attendants. Having departed from Koltsovo Airport in Yekaterinburg (then Sverdlovsk) and bound for Grozny, Flight 6502 had one stopover in Kurumoch Airport of Samara (then Kuibyshev).
While approaching Kurumoch Airport, Kliuyev made a bet with Zhirnov that he, Kliuyev, could make an instrument-only approach with curtained cockpit windows, thus having no visual contact with the ground, instead of NDB approach, suggested by the air traffic control. Kliuyev further ignored the ground proximity warning at an altitude of 62–65 metres (203–213 ft) and did not make the suggested go-around. The aircraft touched down at a speed of 280 kilometres per hour (170 mph) and came to rest upside down. Sixty-three people died during the accident and seven more in hospitals later. Among the passengers were fourteen children, all of whom survived the accident. The top secret report of the Chairman of Kuibyshev oblispolkom V.A. Pogodin to the Premier of the Soviet Union Nikolai Ryzhkov gave slightly different figures: 85 passengers and 8 crew members aboard, 53 passengers and five crew members died in the crash and 11 more later at the hospital.
Even though Zhirnov made no attempt to avert the crash, he subsequently tried to save the passengers and died of cardiac arrest en route to hospital. Kliuyev was prosecuted and sentenced to fifteen years in prison, later reduced to six years served.
