Aircraft

One of the aircraft involved was a Tupolev Tu-134AK, registration CCCP-65735, that was operating a domestic scheduled Donetsk–Minsk passenger service, flying at an altitude of 8,400 metres (27,600 ft); there were 84 occupants aboard, of whom 77 were passengers. The other aircraft was a Tupolev Tu-134A, tail number СССР-65816, that was operating the last leg of a domestic scheduled Chelyabinsk–Voronezh–Kishinev passenger service under the airline's Moldova division, flying at the same altitude the former aircraft was; it had 94 occupants on board, consisting of 88 passengers and 6 crew.

Description of the accident

An air traffic controller noticed that the aircraft were on intersecting routes and ordered the Minsk-bound flight to climb to 9,000 metres (30,000 ft). The controller heard a muffled reply and assumed it was an acknowledgement from this aircraft, yet the muffled transmission was actually from another airplane. Both machines collided in a cloud, at 26,000 feet (7,900 m), approximately over Dniprodzerzhynsk, then located in the Ukrainian SSR. CCCP-65735's right wing sliced through CCCP-65816's forward fuselage. The impact spun the Kishinev-bound plane around, causing the tails of the aircraft to collide. The Minsk-bound plane nosedived into the ground, while the other plane disintegrated and fell to the ground in pieces. All occupants of both aircraft perished in the accident, including 17 players and staff of the then Soviet top division Pakhtakor Football Club team.