They Knew and Stayed Silent: The Night Aeroflot Descended into Fog

They Knew and Stayed Silent: The Night Aeroflot Descended into Fog

Visibility plunged from 3,000 to 800 metres that night, and the people who saw it logged the change - but never told the crew; 64 of 103 aboard died when an Ilyushin Il-18 struck the ground 210 metres right of the runway at 301 km/h. Who decided to cancel vital weather reports and reverse a diversion order, and why was that information withheld until it was too late?

In this episode, we tell the sequence of events surrounding Aeroflot Descended 101 on January 4, 1965, and present the documented decisions and omissions that shaped its final minutes. Listen to how delayed departures, an extra senior official in the cockpit, and missing weather updates combined into a single unanswered question: could those lives have been saved if the crew had known what others already did?

Person: Captain Konstantin Sergeevich Artamonov Person: Check Captain Rishat Nurmukhametovich Azakov Aircraft: Ilyushin Il-18B, registration CCCP-756685 Date: January 4, 1965 Location: Alma-Ata Airport, Soviet Kazakhstan

- Aircraft struck the ground at 21:01 at a point 210 metres to the right of the runway. - Impact speed recorded at 300 kilometres per hour. - 64 of the 103 people aboard were killed. - Visibility had dropped from 3,000 metres in the last received report to 800 metres at the airport. - Three scheduled meteorological reports at 20:00, 20:15, and 20:30 Moscow time were not issued.

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