“The loss of the Il-112 will greatly postpone the time of flight tests, and this is a failure of the Ilyushin Design Bureau.” Vadim Lukashevich about the plane crash near Kubinka

In the video posted, it is noticeable that there was a fire in the engine, that is, the reason for the fall is technical. It is difficult to talk about the details now, because in the event of a failure of one engine, the plane should be able to safely land on the second engine. An extensive fire broke out, it is clear that the flowing kerosene was already burning, which means that the fuel lines were damaged there, and the plane began to fall.

In this case, the fire extinguishing system should have worked, but it either worked and was ineffective, or it was not turned on, or it did not work. The plane began an uncontrollable stall on the right wing, which is also strange. The Investigative Committee announced a piloting error, but it is not yet clear to me what it was. This does not follow from the video posted. Now only the version of bad weather can be ruled out. It is necessary to understand whether the plane was controllable. If so, then we can assume a piloting error, and if not, then what does the pilots have to do with it? They were very experienced.

In any case, the first prototype of this aircraft has now been lost, which will significantly postpone the timing of flight tests. In general, the Il-112V is a dreary and painful plane. It is being created to replace the An-26 military transport aircraft, which was produced in the Ukrainian SSR. This is a good aircraft, which is currently in operation, but it is very old, and within a year or two, all such aircraft should be decommissioned.

The Il-112V was designed by the Ilyushin Design Bureau, and designed it extremely poorly. This is a small plane, and when it started flying it turned out to be overweight between 3 and 5 tons, which is comparable to its nominal payload. That is, the first sample can only carry itself. As the Ilyushin people themselves stated in justification, they recruited young designers and that’s how they designed it. This indicates that a significant generation gap has occurred in the design bureau, and now they are not able to design a normal aircraft.

It turns out that the Il-112 is intended to replace the An-26, which flew 50-60 years ago – the new model has more powerful engines, but a lower payload. This is a regression. We cannot even design an aircraft that would correspond to the characteristics of the An-26 and the level of technology of that time. If you have a more powerful engine, then you should have a larger payload and other characteristics better. This, as we can see, did not happen. The culture of designing good aircraft has been lost, at least in the Ilyushin Design Bureau.

We can also note the fact that when the design of the first model of the Il-112 was in the final stage, Rogozin’s son was appointed head of the bureau – a man from outside and without education. It was assumed that when the plane was rolled out and its first flight took place, then this son of Rogozin would skim all the cream. And since a big scandal arose during the delivery of the plane and the Ministry of Defense refused to accept it in this form, demanding to modify it, then Rogozin’s son was quickly removed from there and hid away from the aircraft industry.

For an aircraft to become effective, it must be lightened by at least 3 tons – for a machine of this size it is a daunting task even for experienced designers. If it were a large aircraft with a mass of 200 tons, then 3 tons could somehow be cut, and for an aircraft of this dimension it is necessary to redesign some components, assemblies, change materials – this is a whole story.