Russia loses Il‑76 plane. It's a giant heavy transporter
Near Dushanbe, the capital of Tajikistan, a Russian Il-76 transport plane burned down. The circumstances of the event suggest that Russian planes are in increasingly poor condition, and the loss of subsequent machines is the result of their exploitation.
9:36 AM EDT, October 25, 2023
The Ił-76MD airplane crash occurred shortly after takeoff. As Maciej Szopa from Defence24 reports, the temperature of one of the four engines then began to increase in an uncontrolled manner.
The crew responded by making an emergency fuel dump and attempting to return to the airport, but they were forced to abandon the plane, and the Il-76 was completely destroyed. This is another non-combat loss in the Russian fleet of transporters that has occurred recently.
Just a month earlier, for reasons still unexplained, an Il-76 (formally Mali, but in practice flying with a Russian crew and operated by the Russians) crashed in Mali, with members of the Wagner Group on board.
Heavy transport aircraft Il-76
The IL-76 is a quad-engine transport aircraft that first flew in 1971. It is 154 feet long, has a wingspan of 164 feet, and weighs 196,211 lbs. The aircraft can carry up to 105,821 lbs of cargo. Its maximum range is approximately 2734 miles.
The increasingly poor condition of Russian airplanes
The IL-76MD that was burned in Tajikistan was built in 1982 and underwent renovation in 2021. For the first nearly 40 years of service, it performed an average of six to seven flights per month. Over the last 29 months, this average has increased to 36 flights a month, often performed on short routes.
This means that about 100 of these types of transport planes at Russia's disposal have taken over some of the tasks of lighter aircraft, which the Russians have too few of in relation to their needs. In conjunction with a multiple increase in takeoffs and landings - the maneuvers that put the most strain on the aircraft's structure - this leads to faster wear and tear of valuable machines.
The usage may proceed even faster due to the reduction in the number of these aircraft, resulting from losses suffered in the war in Ukraine. So far, Russia has lost at least five Il-76s. Two more machines were probably destroyed, and two more were damaged during the Ukrainian attack on the air base in Pskov.
