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This is the story of vnukovo airlines flight 2801. On the 29th of august 1996 a TU 154 was flying from Vnukovo international airport in moscow to Longyear airport in svalbard norway. The plane had 130 passengers on board. This was a chartered flight filled with coal mining families from the towns of barentsburg and pyramiden in svalbard., the captain for this flight had landed in Svalbard before and this was the first officer's first time. The crew was rounded out by a navigator and a flight engineer.
The plane took off from moscow without any issue and soon it was over the barents sea cruising at 35,000 feet streaking towards svalbard at 500 kmph or 310 miles per hour. Before they got in touch with longyear controllers on Svalbard the crew went over their plans. They'd be landing on runway 10. The approach to runway 10 was simple enough you flew along the coast line and then you turned to line up with the runway and you just followed the ILS beacon down to the runway. By 7:55 am they were ready to start their descent, but they couldnt establish communication with Bodo control. Right after that they were in touch with Longyear AFIS. Afis stands for aerodrome flight information system. In this case it was a person that gave out information about the airport to approaching planes. Information like the runway in use the winds temperature that sort of stuff. The AFIS officer was not a controller, he was just a person who gave out information. The AFIS officer told the crew that the runway in use was runway 28, so theyd have to approach the airport from the other side to land on runway 28. But the crew didnt understand this due to language difficulties, they tried asking for runway 10 again but the AFIS officer told them that runway 28 was the runway in use. This seemed to get the point across, the crew began preparing for an approach to runway 28. Compared to runway 10, runway 28 was a different beast altogether. Runway 28 was bordered by high mountains this meant that you couldnt just line up and land. Runway 28 needed what's known as an offset approach. For the offset approach you needed to fly to the ADV beacon and then you needed to make a sharp right turn to fly away from the airport. When you were sufficiently far away you had to make a 180 degree turn and fly towards the airport, this inbound leg took them right down the middle of a valley known as the advental valley. On the inbound leg they could tune a beacon called lima alpha situated at the foot of the runway. This would help to help guide them through the valley. If you flew towards the beacon on a heading of 300 then it would take you straight down the valley, keeping you safe from the 3000 foot peaks on either side. When you were close enough to the runaway you could turn, line up and land.
This is what the crew had to do to land on runway 28 but today it was quite cloudy and that would just make things harder. By 8:15 am the plane was at the ADV beacon, the plane made the right turn that would take it away from the airport. In two minutes they were ready to make their 180 degree turn to turn back to the airport. The navigator said “ah abeam eight miles inbound” to signify that they were almost established on the inbound vector towards the airport and that theyd announce when they were at the 8 mile mark. The AFIS controller checked his VDF display to see if the plane was where it was supposed to be, it was ,so he responded with “correct”. That was that.
As the plane came out of the 180 degree turn confusion was brewing in the cockpit the pilots werent sure if they had made the turns correctly. The first officer said “maybe we took the fourth