2016 Russian Defence Ministry Tupolev Tu-154 crash
On 25 December 2016, a Tupolev Tu-154 jetliner of the Russian Defence Ministry crashed into the Black Sea shortly after taking off from Sochi International Airport, Russia, while en route to Khmeimim Air Base, Syria. All 92 passengers and crew on board, including 64 members of the Alexandrov Ensemble choir of the Russian Armed Forces, were killed. The aircraft had flown from Chkalovsky Airport and had landed at Sochi to refuel.
RA-85572, the aircraft involved, in May 2016
The Tupolev Tu-154 is a three-engined, medium-range, narrow-body airliner designed in the mid-1960s and manufactured by Tupolev. A workhorse of Soviet and (subsequently) Russian airlines for several decades, it carried half of all passengers flown by Aeroflot and its subsidiaries, remaining the standard domestic-route airliner of Russia and former Soviet states until the mid-2000s. It was exported to 17 non-Russian airlines and used as a head-of-state transport by the air forces of several countries.
Tupolev Tu-154
Tu-154 for Russian Ministry of Defence Manufacturing, Aviakor plant, 2009, one of several airframes built in the 1990s and left unsold
Tupolev Tu-154B-1 of Palair Macedonian at Zurich Airport in 1992
The cockpit of the Tupolev Tu-154