Russian military plane with 92 on board crashes into Black Sea

[EnterpriseSovereign]

A Russian military plane bound for Syria has crashed into the Black Sea after disappearing from radar shortly after taking off from the city of Sochi.

The country's ministry of defence said 92 people, including the army's celebrated male choir and orchestra, were on board the plane.

Defence ministry spokesman Major-General Igor Konashenkov said no survivors have been spotted in the Black Sea crash site.

Link

[Sea Skimmer]

That sucks, up with Brazil loosing it's soccer team. The Russians have deployed what sounded like every diver in the Black Sea Fleet for a rescue attempt.

The plane went Moscow-Sochi and refueled, then crashed about 1 mile off the end of the runway at Sochi, which is near waters edge. Given that its winter, the unending enemy of bad fuel might be to blame on this, the conspiray theories are going to be insane no matter what evidence is found.

[K. A. Pital]

"Renewing" parts cannibalized from other planes in boiling kerosene, then using these as replacements - at some point, this type of attitude to aircraft safety gotta give. And it gives.

This is Russia we're talking about.

[Simon_Jester]

The Russian Army choir is so good even I've heard of them and been impressed. I'm sad to hear about this.

[Broomstick]

Same. That choir was world-class in every way.

Always sorry to hear about a fatal plane crash. I've heard Russian maintenance techniques have improved (i.e. become more sane and safe) over the past couple decades, I hope this wasn't a case of bad practices coming home to roost.

[Lord Revan]

Same. That choir was world-class in every way.

Always sorry to hear about a fatal plane crash. I've heard Russian maintenance techniques have improved (i.e. become more sane and safe) over the past couple decades, I hope this wasn't a case of bad practices coming home to roost.

I'll third saying that choir was good.

as for the crash itself, while I hope it's not, I suspect it might be case of "sins of the father" meaning that even if the maintence has improved recently there's enough damage done from previous lack luster maintence that improvements didn't matter in the end.

[Wing Commander MAD]

Out of curiosity since someone probably knows, are the Russian military maintenance practices a result of the post-Soviet collapse, where anything the Russians were doing right went to hell, or were they always bad? I am guessing the latter, due to fact that everything I have ever heard about the Soviet space program and some of their other major projects (Aral Sea draining, immediate post-Chernobyl response) indicate they had a cavalier attitude at best when it came to safety and environmental concerns.

"Renewing" parts cannibalized from other planes in boiling kerosene, then using these as replacements - at some point, this type of attitude to aircraft safety gotta give. And it gives.

This is Russia we're talking about.

Isn't this basically how the current U.S. B-52 fleet is maintained? Granted, I seem to recall there being instances of said aircraft literally breaking apart in flight.

[Simon_Jester]

I could be wrong but I believe:

The B-52 force does indeed have a lot of cannibalization for spare parts going on. On the other hand, a fair number of B-52s were retired early in their service lives, which means that we have large reservoir of spare parts that are in relatively good shape. It helps that the "boneyard" B-52s are kept under good storage conditions so that they don't start to rust out or otherwise fail.

If you just park the aircraft in a random field somewhere in a forest and don't bother to keep checking up on them, the odds of getting serviceable spares out of them would be a lot lower. And I suspect that maintaining serviceable boneyards for old military aircraft hasn't been a high priority for the Russian government in the past quarter century.

[Sea Skimmer]

That was the point of the boiled in kerosene part of the comment. Nothing is wrong with reusing old parts after they've been checked and reconditioned correctly. Generator housings for example can be reused with new windings and bearings. But if someone just boils the part in cheap solvent to make it look clean, then puts it back together you've got a problem. Then your problem becomes fatal if the guys working in the maintenance hanger don't give a damn to check up on stuff like this. In the West you track every part number for ware items, its history and what plane its presently on.

[K. A. Pital]

In post-collapse times, the centralized parts supply system was dismantled. The control over parts supply used to be critical in ensuring the quality of spares and reused components. Nowadays due to the situation around 2000 parts are being used in military aircraft which the producing factories refuse to even acknowledge as their own. The exact source of these parts and their history is lost, so determining their use-time is practically impossible. One of the worst impacts this had is on the helicopter fleet, because reusing engines which have exceeded their maintenance period without even knowing they need a complete overhaul leads to crashes. And there's been quite a few of these.

[Lord Revan]

In post-collapse times, the centralized parts supply system was dismantled. The control over parts supply used to be critical in ensuring the quality of spares and reused components. Nowadays due to the situation around 2000 parts are being used in military aircraft which the producing factories refuse to even acknowledge as their own. The exact source of these parts and their history is lost, so determining their use-time is practically impossible. One of the worst impacts this had is on the helicopter fleet, because reusing engines which have exceeded their maintenance period without even knowing they need a complete overhaul leads to crashes. And there's been quite a few of these.

This was I was referring when I used "sins of the father" even if the current maintenance standards were up to date, if the paperwork for the service history of the parts the plane uses is lost or imcomplete you will run into problems, problems that lead to crashes sadly.

There's a really good reason why that paperwork exists and should be kept up to date.

[SpottedKitty]

Out of curiosity since someone probably knows, are the Russian military maintenance practices a result of the post-Soviet collapse, where anything the Russians were doing right went to hell, or were they always bad? I am guessing the latter, due to fact that everything I have ever heard about the Soviet space program and some of their other major projects (Aral Sea draining, immediate post-Chernobyl response) indicate they had a cavalier attitude at best when it came to safety and environmental concerns.

For the space programme at least, it's... variable. Unmanned flights don't appear to be too much different from NASA and ESA in success rate, and manned launches have at least always had the escape system work (so far) when there's been a Bad Day. On the other hand, the mothballed Buran shuttle was destroyed when the hangar roof collapsed; it had been used for years as an unofficial storage area for "big heavy stuff we'll maybe never need, but hang on to it".

I've also heard scary things about mothballed nuclear icebreakers and subs being stored in questionable conditions, including at least one storage site having its power (for unimportant little things like reactor cooling) cut off because of unpaid power bills.

Back to the crash, has anyone else come across reports that the plane began to turn back just before crashing? I've only come across one mention of this. And I was a bit surprised at pictures of the recovered FDR; was it really still using reel-to-reel tape?