Airplane Accidents Ussr

A Soviet military transport plane crashed in the Caspian Sea, killing all 50 paratroopers and seven crew members aboard, after a fire broke out in an engine, state-run news media reported. The Ilyushin 76 aircraft was apparently carrying the troops to quell unrest in the southern republic of Azerbaijan, which is locked in a dispute with Armenia over the region of Nagorno-Karabakh.

A federal court jury on Wednesday awarded $50 million to the families of 137 passengers killed when a Korean Air Lines plane strayed into Soviet territory and was shot down six years ago. All 269 people aboard the plane were killed in the Sept. 1, 1983, disaster. The jury decided on punitive damages after returning a verdict that said KAL had committed willful misconduct.

A Soviet military transport plane carrying rescue workers and relief supplies to victims of the devastating earthquake in northern Armenia crashed Sunday, killing all 78 aboard. The aircraft, a wide-bodied, four-engine Ilyushin 76, went down as it approached Leninakan, Armenia's second-largest city and one of the hardest hit by last Wednesday's magnitude 6.9 temblor, during a massive airlift bringing assistance to the stricken region, according to a government announcement.

The downing of an Iranian airliner over the Persian Gulf on Sunday brought to mind the incident five years ago in which the Soviet Union shot down an unarmed Korean airliner, killing all 269 aboard. In both incidents, Washington and Moscow insisted they had acted properly in self-defense and both insisted that the doomed planes ignored warning signals and were out of their assigned air corridors. But in contrast to the hours of Soviet tracking of the Korean Air Flight 007 on Sept.

An Aeroflot jetliner with 51 people aboard crashed and burst into flames Saturday while attempting to land in the Siberian town of Surgut, the official Tass news agency said. The TU-134 was carrying 45 passengers and six crew members, according to Tass, but there was no word on how many were killed and injured in the crash, which occurred at mid-morning in Surgut. The Soviet news agency did confirm that there were deaths and said that most of the survivors appeared to have been badly burned.

A Soviet Aeroflot airliner missed the runway while trying to land in Krasnovodsk, flipped over and broke in two, killing 11 people and injuring 12, Soviet media reported. "The weather was fine, the air was clear and transparent, visibility was perfect--nothing augured the tragedy," the official Tass news agency reported.

Contrary to President Reagan's public statements at the time, U.S. intelligence officials quickly determined in 1983 that the Soviet Union had shot down a Korean Air Lines 747 without realizing that it was a civilian airliner, according to documents made public Tuesday. On Sept.