Another plane's crew of two also was killed. — Feb. 12, 2002: A Tu-154 operated by Iran's Airtour smashes into mountains near its destination of Khorramabad, killing all 119 people aboard.

The Tupolev's Tu-154 (search) remains the standard medium range airliner on domestic flights in Russia and other former Soviet states and to a lesser extent in eastern Europe and Iran (search).

The shape of the Tu-154 can be misleading, though, since it’s a durable, robust aircraft that has been used in all sorts of runway and landing conditions. The aircraft has been phased out by ...

Hidden in plain sight at SVO and VKO, Russia’s Special Flight Squadron operates a fleet unlike any other. From the massive Il ...

A Tupolev Tu-154 stands on the tarmac of the Chkalovsky military airport north of Moscow, Russia, Jan. 15, 2015. REUTERS/Dmitry Petrochenko The crashed Russian Tu-154 plane had equipment ...

* The Tu-154 first flew in 1968, was delivered to Aeroflot in early 1971 and entered regular service in February 1972.

While the Tu-154 remains quite popular among the crews that fly it, it most certainly has a spotty safety record. According to Irish news agency RTE, there have been seven crashes involving the Tu ...

Some experts draw parallels between the Tu-154 crash and the explosion onboard a passenger Airbus 321-231 en route from Sharm-el-Sheikh to St. Petersburg that took place on Oct. 30, 2015.

The Tu-154 was developed by the Soviet Tupolev design bureau and was the most widely used midrange passenger aircraft in the Soviet Union. More than 1,000 of them saw service.

The Tu-154 is a Soviet-built three-engine airliner designed in the late 1960s. The plane that crashed Sunday was built in 1983, and underwent factory check-ups and maintenance in 2014 as well as ...

The shape of the Tu-154 can be misleading, though, since it’s a durable, robust aircraft that has been used in all sorts of runway and landing conditions. The aircraft has been phased out by ...