The Tupolev ANT-20 Maxim Gorky was a Soviet eight-engine aircraft, the largest in the world during the 1930s. Its wingspan was similar to that of a modern Boeing 747, and was not exceeded until the 64.6-metre (212 ft) wingspan Douglas XB-19 heavy bomber prototype first flew in 1941.
The Tupolev ANT-7, known by the VVS as the Tupolev R-6, was a reconnaissance aircraft and escort fighter of the Soviet Union. The R-6 traces its roots back to early 1928 when the Soviet Air Force needed a long-range multirole aircraft. The requirements were that it could be used for long-range transport, defensive patrolling, reconnaissance, light bombing and torpedo attack.
The ANT-2 was the first all-metal aircraft designed by the Tupolev design bureau. A small passenger plane, it could carry two passengers in a cabin behind the pilot.
The Tupolev ANT-25 was a Soviet long-range experimental aircraft which was also tried as a bomber. First constructed in 1933, it was used by the Soviet Union for a number of record-breaking flights.
Vladivostok Air Flight 352 was a scheduled passenger flight from Yekaterinburg, Russia to Vladivostok via Irkutsk. On 4 July 2001, the aircraft operating the flight, a Tupolev Tu-154M with tail number RA-85845, lost control, stalled, and crashed while approaching Irkutsk Airport. All 136 passengers and 9 flight crew members aboard perished, making it the third deadliest aircraft crash over Russian territory to date after Aeroflot Flight 3352 and Aeroflot Flight 217.
Aeroflot Flight 3352 was a regularly scheduled Aeroflot domestic flight in the Soviet Union from Krasnodar to Novosibirsk, with an intermediate landing in Omsk. While landing at Omsk Airport on Thursday, 11 October 1984, the aircraft crashed into maintenance vehicles on the runway, killing 174 people on board and four on the ground. While a chain of mistakes in airport operations contributed to the accident, its major cause was an air traffic controller falling asleep on duty.
Caspian Airlines Flight 7908 was a scheduled commercial flight from Tehran, Iran, to Yerevan, Armenia, that crashed near the village of Jannatabad, outside the city of Qazvin in north-western Iran, on 15 July 2009. All 153 passengers and 15 crew members on board died.
The 1973 Paris Air Show Tu-144 crash of Sunday 3 June 1973 destroyed the second production model of the Russian supersonic Tupolev Tu-144. The aircraft disintegrated in the air while performing extreme manoeuvres and fell on the town of Goussainville, Val-d'Oise, France, killing all six crew members and eight people on the ground. The crash ended the development program of the Tupolev Tu-144. The official inquest did not conclusively determine the cause of the accident and several theories have been proposed.
RusAir Flight 9605 was a passenger flight which crashed near Petrozavodsk in the Republic of Karelia, Russia, on 20 June 2011 while attempting to land in thick fog. The aircraft involved, a Tupolev Tu-134, was operating a RusAir scheduled domestic flight from Moscow. Of the 52 people on board, only 5 survived.
Founded in 1923, Aeroflot, the flag carrier and largest airline of Russia, has had a high number of fatal crashes, with a total of 8,231 passengers dying in Aeroflot crashes according to the Aircraft Crashes Record Office, mostly during the Soviet era, about five times more than any other airline. From 1946 to 1989, the carrier was involved in 721 incidents. From 1995 to 2017, the carrier was involved in 10 incidents. In 2013, AirlineRatings.com reported that five of the ten aircraft models involved in the highest numbers of fatal accidents were old Soviet models.
Aeroflot Flight 3932 was a flight operated by Aeroflot from Koltsovo Airport to Omsk Tsentralny Airport. On 30 September 1973, the Tupolev Tu-104 operating the route crashed shortly after takeoff from Sverdlovsk, killing all 108 passengers and crew on board.
Aeroflot Flight 2415 was a regularly scheduled passenger flight from Moscow to Leningrad that crashed shortly after takeoff on 28 November 1976. The cause of the accident was attributed to crew disorientation as a result of artificial horizon failure in low visibility conditions.
Aeroflot Flight 2808 was a scheduled domestic passenger flight from Mineralnye Vody to Ivanovo, both in Russia, with a stopover in Donetsk, Ukraine on 27 August 1992. While attempting to land at Ivanovo airport, the Tupolev Tu-134 crashed into a group of buildings in the village of Lebyazhy Lug. Investigators determined the cause of the accident was errors made by the crew and the air traffic controller. There were no fatalities on the ground, but all 84 people on board the flight died in the crash.
Aeroflot Flight 2022 was a scheduled Soviet domestic passenger flight between Vilnius Airport in Lithuanian SSR and Vnukovo International Airport in Moscow, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union that crashed on 16 December 1973, killing 51 people on board. The flight suffered a loss of control as a result of a malfunction of its elevator, causing it to crash as it made its final descent into Moscow. At the time of the crash it was the worst accident in aviation history involving a Tupolev Tu-124 since it entered service with Aeroflot in 1962.
The 1958 Aeroflot Тu-104 Kanash crash occurred on 17 October 1958 when a Tupolev Tu-104A operated by Aeroflot flying an international route from Beijing to Moscow crashed in bad weather near the town of Kanash, Chuvashia, Soviet Union, four hundred miles east of Moscow, killing all 80 people on board. The flight was carrying high-level diplomatic delegations from numerous Soviet aligned countries such as China, East Germany, and Czechoslovakia. It was just the second fatal accident involving the Tu-104 which had been introduced into Aeroflot's inventory two years earlier, and the deadliest in the airline's history until the crash of Aeroflot Flight 902 in 1962.
Viktor Nikolayevich Belyaev was a Soviet aircraft designer, former head of the OKB-4, and the founder of the science of the strength of aircraft structures in the Soviet Union.
Nikolai Stepanovich Rybko was a decorated test pilot and lead engineer of the Gromov Flight Research Institute. He participated in tests of roughly 110 aircraft types and variations before his piloting career was cut short in 1954 by injuries from a car accident that left him grounded.
On 14 December 1942, a Tupolev ANT-20bis aircraft operated by Russian airline Aeroflot crashed during a scheduled domestic passenger flight from Urgench to Tashkent, Uzbekistan. All 36 people on board died, and the accident was due to a loss of control.
G-2 Crash near Alma-Ata was an aviation accident involving a G-2 aircraft operated by Aeroflot near Alma-Ata on 26 December 1941. The crash resulted in the deaths of 26 people, including several leaders of the Kazakh SSR. This was the first documented air disaster on the territory of Kazakhstan.
The 1933 Tupolev ANT-7 Podolsk crash was an aviation accident that occurred south of Podolsk, Moscow Oblast, on Tuesday, 5 September 1933. The crash involved a converted Tupolev ANT-7 aircraft and resulted in the deaths of all eight people on board, including prominent figures in the Soviet aviation industry and civil aviation. The incident gained widespread attention and ultimately led to a comprehensive reorganization of air transport in the Soviet Union.
