On Wednesday, 2 September 1964, the aircraft flying this route, an Ilyushin Il-18V, crashed into the side of a hill on approach to Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, killing 87 of the 93 people on board.

The aircraft involved in the accident was an Ilyushin Il-18V turboprop airliner registered CCCP-75531 to the Krasnoyarsk Civil Aviation Directorate of Aeroflot.

The cockpit crew consisted of:[3] Flight attendants Anastasia Tsebak, Lyubov Orekhova, and Nikolay Filatov worked in the cabin.

At 20:00 the flight departed Khabarovsk en route to the final destination, Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, carrying 84 passengers, including 17 children.

The air traffic controller warned the crew of an irregular southeasterly wind at a speed of 14.4 km/h in the airport area, and instructed them to take a landing course on a bearing of 10° (to the south).

At 21:11, 26 kilometres (16 mi) north-west of the airport, the Il-18 it crashed into a wooded hillside at an elevation of 550 metres (1,800 ft) feet, killing all nine crew members and 78 of the 84 passengers.

The official report cited pilot error and poor in-flight planning as the cause of the accident; the crew initiated descent prematurely and apparently did not have sufficient knowledge of approach conditions, and these factors combined ultimately led to the crash.