Very sad indeed :nope:

According to one of the ATC on duty, the aircraft didn't even get airborne until a couple of metres after the threshold. Mechanical failures and whatnot aside, it's looking like the pilot should have initiated a rejected takeoff.

Looking at some of the Civil Aviation rules and regulations, it looks like the Yak-42 cannot take off at full load with one engine out :/

All very preliminary at the moment. I know that the Yak-42 was delayed in testing due to many problems, most of them around the tail area.


Haven't translated it yet, maybe-real-maybe-fake video HERE - http://www.ntv.ru/novosti/238742/

When I started taking flying lessons the instructor said "Any fool can fly a plane, it takes a good pilot to make the right decisions." For some reason that came to mind reading your sentence. (It's not a judgement on the pilot, just a though that came to mind.)

One of the players, Pavol Demitra, was until recently a player on my local NHL team so it is getting quite a bit of press here. He was at his best with St. Louis so it is probably the same there.

http://canucks.nhl.com/club/news.htm?id=587826

yeah, I did a walk around of an Ex-FedEX 727, and I can assure you it was rough, leaking skydrol, some fuel, paint nasty. She was made in 1975 and looked her age. I'm sure those Russian planes are no different, especially coming from Russia with such harsh winters.

although it was cool the see the mighty 727 still equipped with the cooper stair in person

Maintained properly, an aircraft will last it's design life and mabe beyond. Look at the RAF VC10 and Tristar fleet, which work very hard indeed. The 727 you saw may not have had future owners/operators in the pipeline and so was not up to scratch. The paint job doesn't tell you much, I guess in Russia the paint is a lower priority due to the severe winter weather - a/c paint hates hail.

From what it looks like to me, I'm guessing one or more engines blinked out between V1 and VR. Whether the pilots had any indication of this in time to reject the takeoff I don't know. It could also be that the a/c was improperly configured for takeoff, like the Spanair MD82 crash in Madrid a few years back.

It was donated to my University by fed ex. The reason i mentioned to paint is because it was eaten away by all the fuel and Skydrol she was leaking. Even if air frames are maintained to the most they can possibly be, there still is an inverse bell curve of incidents that occurs at the beginning of an aircraft's life to the end. I'm sure these older russian air frames are beginning to come to the end, where accidents are more likely, especially when these Russian air carriers are dealing with older aircraft and smaller budgets. What you say about the old Tristars being in good shape may be true...but I'm positive they spend a lot of maintenance costs for those aircraft.