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Tu-154 in service with the Russian airline Alrosa landing in Novosibirsk
Photo: Kirill Kukhmar / imago images / ITAR-TASS
The traditional Tupolev Tu-154 passenger aircraft, developed in the 1960s for Soviet civil aviation, completed its last scheduled flight on Wednesday.
The small Russian airline Alrosa announced in Moscow that 140 passengers were on board on the flight from the city of Mirny to Novosibirsk.
"We are saddened to announce the end of the service of the last Tu-154, which was still in service with Russian aviation," said Alrosa.
"Thank you Tu-154."
The Alrosa airline is owned by the mining company of the same name, which operates a diamond mine in Mirny.
More than a thousand copies of the Tupolev Tu-154, which first launched in 1968, were made by the manufacturer of the same name.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the machine was still in use for the Russian airline Aeroflot for a long time before it was used less and less after the turn of the millennium, due to its excessive fuel consumption, among other things.
Production was stopped in 2013.
During the Soviet era, numerous other Eastern Bloc countries also commissioned machines of this type, including the GDR and Poland.
The statistics show a high number of accidents with Tu-154 machines.
According to a list by the Aviation Safety Network (ASN), there were a total of 73 serious Tupolev Tu 154 accidents in which 2,911 people were killed.
Many of these accidents have occurred in Russia and other ex-Soviet republics over the past two decades.
It was not always possible to clarify without a doubt whether poor maintenance of the Tupolev, which is often operated by small airlines, was the cause of the accidents, human error or technical problems with the machine itself.
The Tupolev accident, which attracted the most attention worldwide, occurred in western Russia in April 2010: Polish President Lech Kaczynski and the 95 other occupants of the Polish government machine were killed.
The plane crashed into thick fog as it approached for landing.
The flight from Mirny to Novosibirsk was the last use in passenger operations.
Flights with Tu-154 jets still exist: The Russian military uses some of the planes.
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beb / dpa