Good to see some really balanced and realistic debate on this subject. Another factor which has to be taken into account with Russian aicraft is that until relatively recently these machines were designed in and to serve a command economy where the operating costs and marketability of these aircraft was immaterial, they were made to do a specific task and they did so, very well in fact. As far as the accident statistics are concerned it should be remembered, especially in the Communist era, that the amount of Russian made aircraft in operation on a daily basis was huge and often in weather conditions and terrain that would have grounded most “western” types. As I have mentioned before in connection with Aeroflot every civilian aircraft accident in the USSR was automatically tallied to poor old Aeroflot irrespective of wether the aircraft concerned was a an IL86 widebody or an AN2 cropduster or an MI2 air ambulance, as a result of that distortion the totals at that time were very misleading, but hey they made good headlines right? In terms of annual utilisation of Russian built types on a global scale the accident rate is no worse than for many “western” types. In a great many cases, as stated by others on here, its bad or non existant maintenance, pilot error and sometimes weather which brings these birds down, it is not often technical problems and hardly ever due to airframe/structural failure. tenthije….love that IF TU134!
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