While landing at Omsk Airport on Thursday, 11 October 1984, the aircraft crashed into maintenance vehicles on the runway, killing 174 people on board and four on the ground.

While a chain of mistakes in airport operations contributed to the accident, its major cause was an air traffic controller falling asleep on duty.

The remaining two cockpit crew members were flight engineer Vitaly Pronozin and navigator Yuri Blazhin.

The flight was approaching Omsk in poor weather: light rain, visibility 3 kilometres (1.9 mi; 1.6 nmi) with a 100-metre (330 ft) ceiling.

It was surpassed on 10 July 1985 by Aeroflot Flight 5143, another Tu-154, which crashed in Uzbek SSR (modern day Uzbekistan), and killed 200 people.

The ground controller on duty, 23-year-old Andrey Borodaenko, gave permission and proceeded to fall asleep soon after, in the process forgetting to switch on the "runway occupied" warning.

Under airport regulations, this procedure should never have happened; permission to close and do maintenance on a runway could only be given by the chief controller, who was absent.

The drying detail then proceeded to violate their own safety rules whilst performing their tasks: all of their vehicles should have had their top, flashing lights on continuously.

Ogorodnikov verified the runway status, which remained apparently unoccupied, then attempted to contact the ground controller Borodaenko but received no response.

On touchdown, the flight crew saw the array of drying vehicles and attempted to turn the aircraft, but were unable to avoid the collision.

It was more difficult to survive the feeling that you stayed alive, and more than 170 people behind you — no ... After the tragedy, every year on October 11, I called up flight engineer Vitaly Pronozin, and we always said to each other: "Happy birthday.

"[5] A state investigation concluded that the accident was caused by a chain of mistakes owing to the negligence of air traffic controllers, as well as violations of basic airport maintenance and safety regulations.

Subsequent inspections at numerous other Soviet airports also found similar types and numbers of violations of safety regulations, resulting in the dismissal of several high-level officials thereafter.

The formal hearing of the case occurred only three months after the accident, due to the obvious set of circumstances; most of that time was spent on identifying the victims and locating their relatives.