Incident Overview

Description
An Antonov An-2 impacted wooded terrain next to a residence close to Ekimchan Airstrip, Russia. The aircraft was consumed by fire. One of the two pilots sustained fatal injuries. The aircraft had departed Ekimchan and was en route at an altitude of 1800 meters when the crew noticed a strong smell of gasoline in the cockpit. They decided to return to the departure aerodrome. During descent, the engine began running rough. Sparks and flames were observed. When approaching the airstrip at Ekimchan, the engine began losing power. At an altitude of about 50 meters, the engine stopped. Because of the presence of buildings in front of the aircraft, the crew executed the turn to the left. The aircraft impacted a wooded area, near the end of the runway. Conclusion (translated from Russian): The crash of An-2 RA-02305 aircraft occurred during the forced landing. The necessity of the forced landing was caused by the engine stopping in flight due to the destruction of the cylinder head No.1 of the ASH62-IR engine No.K16509153. The destruction of cylinder head No. 1 is of fatigue nature and occurred due to exhaustion of fatigue life of the cylinder head material and reaching its limit state. Most likely, during the last repair of the engine the crack in the cylinder head was present, but was not through and was not revealed during the inspection. The most likely contributing factor to stopping the engine in flight was the impoverishment of the fuel-air mixture due to icing of the BAC filter mesh and the presence of a rubber plug on the filter flange of the corrector.
Source of Information
http://tass.ru/proisshestviya/4706472, http://mak-iac.org/rassledovaniya/an-2-ra-02305-06-11-2017, http://28.mchs.gov.ru/pressroom/news/item/6071625/http://tass.ru/proisshestviya/4706472, http://mak-iac.org/rassledovaniya/an-2-ra-02305-06-11-2017, http://28.mchs.gov.ru/pressroom/news/item/6071625/Primary Cause
Fatigue of cylinder head material and exhaustion of fatigue life of the cylinder head material leading to engine failure.Fatigue of cylinder head material and exhaustion of fatigue life of the cylinder head material leading to engine failure.Share on: