This is how the plane of the Wagner Group fell. The crucial 30 seconds. “Whatever happened happened quickly”

On Wednesday, in the village of Kuzhenkino, located in the Tver region, 350 km from Moscow, a Legacy 600 plane crashed. Whether Yevgeny Prigozhin, who led the march to the Russian capital two months earlier, was actually on board. But what do we know about the catastrophe itself from a technical point of view? How was the position of the aircraft analyzed?

Flightradar24 reported that it had processed the raw data received from the RA-02795 machine. Significantly, the aircraft did not transmit position data, but did transmit other information. They make it easier to visualize the process of losing altitude.

These systems made it possible to determine the height of the Wagner Group’s aircraft

As the service explains, the Wagner Group plane was equipped with ADS-B. Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast is a technology used in aviation that allows automatic and independent broadcasting of information about position, speed and other flight parameters of the aircraft. Information is transmitted on a specific radio frequency and collected by ground-based ADS-B receivers and other aircraft within range.

Theoretically, thanks to the ADS system alone, the position of the aircraft should be known. This system is used to report the exact position GNSS – Global Navigation Satellite Systema global navigation satellite system. It enables precise determination of position, speed and time, it is a standard in aviation. It’s just that due to interference (or jamming), data from GNSS, airborne GPS, did not reach the receivers.

So how do we know where the plane was? A different technology was used to determine its position. MLAT measures the time it takes for the signals from the machine to reach the various ground receiving stations. So it is a system that uses a typical navigation technique called multilateration. It was thanks to this technique that Flightradar24 knew how the position of the aircraft was changing.

Its position was first determined at 14:59 UTC. At. At 15:11 UTC, the craft rose to cruising altitude (28,000 feet). At 15:20:14 UTC, the last report on the position of the aircraft reached the receivers.

Flightradar24 expert: Whatever happened happened quickly

The machine did not transmit its “GPS” position, but reported altitude, speed, vertical speed and autopilot settings. Therefore, we know that flight RA-02795 began to descend at 15:19 UTC. Then the vertical speed, recorded by the receivers tracked by Flightradar24, began to drop drastically. However, the plane descended briefly and then ascended to a maximum altitude of 30.1 thousand meters. Stop. Then it fell again – to the height of 27.5 thousand. Stop. It began to rise again and after a while reached a height of 29.3 thousand. Stop. And at this height he stabilized. At 15:19 the situation changed dramatically. However, the chart showing the plane’s position shows a sharp decline.

Ian Petchenik from Flightradar24 sums up the situation briefly in an interview with Reuters. In about 30 seconds, the plane fell from an altitude of 28,000 meters. feet to an altitude of 8,000 feet (that is, from an altitude of 8.5 to 2.5 km).

“Whatever happened happened quickly,” the expert said. He also interpreted data about the earlier hovering and ascent of the machine. “Maybe they were wrestling with the plane. However, before the dramatic decline, there was no indication that anything was wrong with this aircraft, he said.

So we have to wait for the official confirmation of what happened on Wednesday near Tver. So far, Russia’s aviation agency Rosaviatia reported that Prigozhin, who led the aborted rebellion in June, was one of the 10 people on board the downed plane. According to the Russian Emergency Situations Ministry, he was flying from Moscow to St. Petersburg when his plane crashed near the village of Kuzhenkino.