Catastrophe of Su-27 at air show in the Polish city of Radom seriously struck reputation of the Russian aircraft engineering in spite of the fact that it was Belarus crew and Poland became a scene. The plane fell on Sunday at 13.17 local time (15.17 Moscow time) in two kilometres from the airport on unsettled territory.
In 2007 at air show in Radom two Polish planes collided at the height 30 metres at a speed of 300 kilometres per hour, then both pilots died.
On August, 16th during preparation to МАX-2009 two fighters Su-27 collided, the commander of the flight group "Russian Heroes" Igor Tkachenko died.
On September, 15th, 2005 the group of planes of the Sixth Army of Air Forces and Air Defense finished flight from St.-Petersburg to one of the airdromes of the Kaliningrad region. During the flight the pilot - major Valery Troyanov - sent a message that he lost orientation. At 16:04 Moscow time the pilot safely catapulted, as by this moment fuel in the plane ended. The plane fell on the territory of Lithuania, 55 kilometres from Kaunas.
On July, 27th, 2002 during air show near Lvov in the course of aerobatic manoeuvre performance the fighter Su-27 fell on spectators. Air show was carried out in the airdrome "Skliniv" on the occasion of 60th anniversary of 14th aviation corps of military air forces of Ukraine. 77 persons died including 28 children, 543 people were recognized as victims.
On July, 17th, 2001 near Pskov during demonstration performance devoted to 85th anniversary of Naval Aircraft vice-commander of Naval Aircraft general-major Timur Apakidze crashed on a fighter Su-33 (deck updating of Su-27).
On December, 12th, 1995 three fighters Su-27 from the flight group of Air Forces of Russia "Russian Heroes" crashed at landing approach for refuelling in difficult weather conditions near the city Cam Ranh (Vietnam) because of the bad flight regulations. Four pilots died.
On March, 20th, 2008 there was serious aviation incident with double operational trainer Su-27UB in the airdrome Dorohovo in the Tver region. At performance of flight around airdrome at the height more than 11 thousand metres onboard electric power of direct supply broke out, communication support and navigating equipment failed. At landing approach the landing gear didn't extend. Having belly-landed the plane with minimum damages, pilots kept the plane safe.
- Let's recollect: first serial Su-27 were supplied to the army in 1984 - that is more than a quarter of a century ago, editor-in-chief of FORUM.msk Anatoly Baranov reminded. - That is frankly speaking it's an old plane though we are given out its numerous updatings as something new and necessarily up-to-date. Su-27, if to read articles in the magazines paid by the developers (there practically no other articles), is acme of perfection and peak of design thought. Though officially Su-27 passed into service by Government Decree from August, 23rd, 1990, when all basic lacks revealed in tests were eliminated. By this time Su-27 for already more than 5 years was de facto in operation. That is from the very beginning it was a problem plane. Then there were years of operation when world design thought went forward and we hanged about - there was no money. So, after a quarter of the century we continue to show this miracle of technique of already passed epoch on air show and continue to pay in specialized press laudatory responses though this material, excuse me, can serve only for technique history. Moreover, the working out of a fighter of the fifth generation was again assigned to "Suhoy" and there are bases to consider that at the end we would be shown next modernization of Su-27 (engine from construction bureau "Saturn" for sure will be exactly the one developed for the export variant of Su-27) and would be suggested to rejoice to next "achievement" by which it would be simply "terribly" to fly (estimation of the gone pilot Tkachenko). We are not talking about protection of air space - all the same all "miracles" will be in a single copy...
