[DUMBGRUNT]

Luck is for rabbits; something is wrong here.

[Resolute Conservative]

All those rubber bands are dry-rotting.

[AppyPappy]

I thought you checked the fuel level.

[Drew68]

Luck is for rabbits; something is wrong here.

All four engines failing? I'm going to guess bad fuel.

[Jagdgewehr]

Word is....they were shot down.

[exnavy]

No money for maintaining.

[blueunicorn6]

I’ll bet it’s the guy here on Free Republic who can make things happen just by thinking about them.

[exit82]

The who parachuted out of the plane are fine.

The pilots stayed with the plane, and attempted to land it; that is when the pilots were killed.

[Uncle Miltie]

[DaxtonBrown]

“crash was probably caused by a malfunction”

That or gravity. It’s a real toss-up here.

[nascarnation]

Well, you can fly aircraft built in the 50s, but you need to maintain them pretty effectively.

[grobdriver]

Four engines don't just fail all at the same time.

These jokers ran the damn thing out of gas.

[RayChuang88]

Interestingly, the safety record of the Tu-95 bomber has been surprisingly quite good considering the age of these planes and the level of aerospace technology involved. That reliability was why the Tu-95 production line was restarted in the early 1980's to build the Tu-95MS version, which carries the Kh-55 nuclear-armed cruise missile (designed specifically to take out DEW radar stations in northern Canada and military installations in Alaska).

Interestingly, had the Tupolev design been more successful, the Tu-114 commercial airliner derived from the Tu-95 could have continued in service with Aeroflot until at least the middle 1980's had they been able to install quieter propellers for the big turboprop engines--the Tu-114 with more modern propellers would probably have a range around 6,000 nautical miles by the middle 1970's, which would have given Aeroflot a plane that could fly further than any Western airliner except the DC-8-62 and the Boeing 747SP.

[CommerceComet]

The odds of four engines failing at the same time due to individual engine failures is astronomical, for all practical purposes, impossible. Unless there is some common element shared by all four engines which failed causing the engines to fail (fuel, electrical system, computer controller, etc.), it is doubtful simultaneous engine failure is the cause of the crash.

[Yo-Yo]

If not ran out of fuel, then was serviced with contaminated fuel, and there was enough uncontaminated fuel in the accumulator tanks to get off the ground.

[Vigilanteman]

A bud of mine from a former life who used to travel to Russia on business regularly told me that aircraft maintenance and safety was spotty at best.

He was once on a twin engine connecting flight where, try as they might, could only get one of the two engines started. Rather than putting them on another plane, they just took off after a delay of an hour or so.

Fortunately, they landed safely.

[hadaclueonce]

Their first attempt to use some ethanol.

[katana]

This sort of thing happens when an old decrepit starts strutting around like it’s 1979 (or 1945) all over again. Putin’s spirit is willing but his hardware is weak. Those little blue pills are affecting his mind.

[M Kehoe]

Methinks the pilot was a Muslim, and the copilot was a homosexual. Flew it into the ground.

5.56mm

[beethovenfan]

“Probably caused by a malfunction”....YA THINK??

[MasterGunner01]

For all four engines to fail it had to be a fuel problem. Either bad fuel (water in the fuel) or empty fuel tanks. I'll bet on bad fuel. The Tu-95 has been in-service with the Russians since 1956. It is the Russian equivalent to our B-52 Stratofortress that entered service in February 1955.