The Antonov An-72 is a Soviet transport aircraft, developed by Antonov. It was designed as an STOL transport and intended as a replacement for the Antonov An-26, but variants have found success as commercial freighters.
The Antonov An-26 is a twin-engined turboprop civilian and military transport aircraft, designed and produced in the Soviet Union from 1969 to 1986.
The Antonov An-28 is a twin-engined light turboprop transport aircraft, developed from the Antonov An-14M. It was the winner of a competition against the Beriev Be-30, for use by Aeroflot as a short-range airliner. It first flew in 1969. A total of 191 were built and 16 remain in airline service as at August 2015. After a short pre-production series built by Antonov, it was licence-built in Poland by PZL-Mielec. In 1993, PZL-Mielec developed its own improved variant, the PZL M28 Skytruck.
The Antonov An-32 is a turboprop twin-engined military transport aircraft. Its first flight was in July 1976 and displayed at the 1977 Paris Air Show. It is oriented towards flying in adverse weather conditions, and was produced from 1980 to 2012, and remains in service. It developed of the An-24, and the An-26 is related.
The 2007 Balad aircraft crash was an airplane incident involving an Antonov An-26 airliner, which crashed on 9 January 2007 while attempting to land at the Joint Base Balad in Balad, Iraq, which was at that time operated by the United States Air Force. The crash killed 34 people aboard and left one passenger critically injured. Officials claim the crash was caused by poor weather conditions, but other sources claim that this is a cover-up and the plane was actually shot down by a missile.
Aeroflot, the Soviet Union's national carrier, experienced a number of serious accidents and incidents during the 1970s. The airline's worst accident during the decade took place in August 1979, when two Tupolev Tu-134s were involved in a mid-air collision over the Ukrainian city then named Dniprodzerzhinsk, with the loss of 178 lives. Including this event, there were nine deadly incidents with more than 100 fatalities, while the total recorded number of casualties was 3,541 for the decade.
Following is a list of accidents and incidents Aeroflot experienced in the 1960s. The deadliest event the Soviet Union's flag carrier went through in the decade occurred in November 1967, when an Ilyushin Il-18V crashed upside down shortly after takeoff from Koltsovo Airport in Sverdlovsk, then located in the Russian SSR, killing all 107 occupants on board, prompting the temporary grounding of the type within the airline's fleet. In terms of fatalities, the accident ranks as the fifth worst involving an Il-18, as of April 2016. Another aircraft of the type was involved in the second deadliest accident the airline experienced in the decade, this time in September 1964, when 87 people were killed when the aircraft struck a hillside on approach to Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk. The decade was also marked by the only deadly accident experienced by a Tupolev Tu-114, which entered commercial service on the Moscow–Khabarovsk route in April 1961.
After the dissolution of the Soviet Union in December 1991, its former republics started establishing their own carriers from the corresponding directorates Aeroflot had at these countries, causing the airline to shrink drastically. The fleet reduced from several thousand aircraft to a number slightly over 100 in 1993, helping the former Soviet Union's national airline to improve its accidents and incidents record sharply. The company experienced 42 events between 1990 and 1991 only, and had 41 occurrences in the rest of the decade. Despite this, the three deadliest accidents the airline went through in the decade occurred in the post-Soviet era, leaving a death toll of 257, each one involving more than 50 fatalities.
Aeroflot Flight 1491 was a scheduled domestic passenger flight from Moscow-Vnukovo Airport to Kharkiv Airport in the USSR that crashed on 18 May 1972 while descending to land in Kharkiv, killing all 122 passengers and crew aboard the Antonov An-10.
Aeroflot Flight 1802 was a commercial flight from Vinnytsia to Moscow that crashed after the rudder deflected sharply and the propellers feathered on 15 May 1976. All 52 passengers and crew aboard the aircraft perished in the crash.
Khmeimim Air Base, also Hmeimim Air Base, is a Syrian airbase currently operated by Russia, located south-east of the city of Latakia in Hmeimim, Latakia Governorate, Syria. The airbase shares some airfield facilities with Bassel Al-Assad International Airport. The legal status of the base is regulated by a treaty Russia and Syria signed in August 2015. At the end of 2017, Russia said it had decided to turn the Khmeimim base into a component of its permanent military contingent stationed in Syria.
The Russian military intervention in the Syrian civil war started on 30 September 2015, with 4,000 Russian military personnel being stationed in Syria. The Russian forces also consisted of 25 strategic bombers, 20 tactical bombers, 12 attack bombers, 8 fighter aircraft, 16 attack helicopters and various other aircraft.
Saratov Airlines Flight 703 was a domestic passenger flight from Moscow Domodedovo Airport to Orsk Airport in Russia. On 11 February 2018, the aircraft serving the flight, an Antonov An-148-100B, crashed shortly after take-off, killing all 71 people on board – 65 passengers and six crew members.
Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky Air Flight 251 (PTK251) was a domestic Russian scheduled passenger flight from Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky to Palana, both in Kamchatka Krai in the Russian Far East. On 6 July 2021, the Antonov An-26 serving the flight crashed on approach to Palana, killing all 28 passengers and crew on board.
