Two Russian passenger jets came down within minutes of each other on 25 August 2004, leaving up to 90 people feared dead. A Tupolev-134 with 44 aboard had been bound for Volgograd; a Tupolev-154 with 46 passengers was headed to the Black Sea resort of Sochi. Chechen separatists fell under early suspicion as elections in the republic approached.
The twin disasters followed two years of mass-casualty aviation accidents. Among 2002's worst: a China Airlines Boeing 747-200 broke apart in flight between Taiwan and Hong Kong in May, killing 225; Air China's Boeing 767 struck a residential neighborhood near Gimhae, South Korea, in April, killing 129; and a Boeing cargo jet collided with a Bashkirian Airlines Tupolev-154 over Germany in July, killing 71.
The pace did not ease in 2003: an Iranian military aircraft hit a mountain range in February, killing 276; roughly 200 perished when the rear door of a Ukrainian defense ministry cargo plane failed mid-flight over the Democratic Republic of Congo; a Turkish Airlines jet crashed while approaching Diyarbakır airport in Türkiye in January, killing 75. Already in 2004, an Egyptian charter had fallen into the Red Sea on 3 January, killing all 141 on board.
Historical summary. TurkishPress restated this AFP wire report, first published in August 2004, in its own words.