Aeroflot Flight 3739 (1988)

Aeroflot Flight 3739 (1988)

Aeroflot Tupolev Tu-154B, similar to that involved in the accident
Hijacking
Date	8 March 1988
Summary	Hijacking
Aircraft
Aircraft type	Tupolev Tu-154B
Operator	Aeroflot
Registration	CCCP-85413
Flight origin	Irkutsk Airport, Irkutsk, Irkutsk Oblast, Russian SFSR, USSR
Stopover	Kurgan Airport, Kurgan, Kurgan Oblast, Russian SFSR, USSR
Destination	Pulkovo Airport, Leningrad, Russian SFSR, USSR
Occupants	84
Passengers	76
Crew	8
Fatalities	9 (including 5 of the hijackers)
Injuries	20 to 36
Survivors	75

Aeroflot Flight 3739^[1] was a Soviet domestic passenger flight from Irkutsk to Leningrad (now Saint Petersburg) with a stopover in Kurgan. On 8 March 1988, after the Tupolev Tu-154 operating the flight had left Kurgan, it was hijacked by the Ovechkin family, whose members sought to defect from the Soviet Union.^[2]

The Ovechkin family demanded the crew fly the aircraft to London.^[1] However, the flight engineer persuaded them to allow a stopover in Finland for refueling.^[1] The aircraft instead landed at the Soviet military airbase Veshchevo, near the Finnish border, where it was stormed by the incident response team of the Soviet interior ministry.^[1] During the incident, a flight attendant (Tamara Zharkaya) was shot dead on the orders of the Ovechkin matriarch and three hostages were killed during the storming of the aircraft. Five hijackers committed suicide. Two surviving prosecutable members of the family were sentenced to eight and six years in prison, respectively. Zharkaya was posthumously awarded the Order of the Red Banner as a result of the incident.^[3]