[circus1540]

A figure which stunned me: Mi-26, the successor to the Mi-6 was involved in the deadliest helicopter crash, after being shot down during the second chechen campaign. It was carrying 142 passengers, 127 of which died. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2002_Khankala_Mi-26_crash

[LVB]

>the helicopter crash-landed in a minefield that made up part of the federal military headquarters' perimeter defenses. Some of the survivors, attempting to abandon the wrecked Mi-26, are reported to have been killed by 'friendly' anti-personnel mine explosions

[Arn_Thor]

Ah, Russia/the Soviet Union, land of “but wait, it gets worse”.

[coolspot]

Video of the incident: https://youtu.be/JjpXofja1EM?si=E90kSKtGAwFQoUWN

[kabes]

I've been in mi-26s a couple of times (friend of mine used to have 3 of them in storage) and up close it's almost unbelievable the thing can fly.

[datameta]

It was heavily overloaded, for the record. But huge machine nonetheless.

[bell-cot]

Not to dismiss either the "shot down", or loss of life - but that does illustrate why very large passenger helicopters are a bad idea. Too many lives at stake, and a helicopter is generally a far more fragile basket than a fixed-wing aircraft.

[loloquwowndueo]

That thought is not very logical. Very large passenger fixed wings are also a very bad idea and fragile if the premise is someone is shooting at them.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_Air_Flight_655

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malaysia_Airlines_Flight_17

[__turbobrew__]

I don’t think that is how probability works. The same amount of people will die to helicopter crashes regardless of the helicopter size.

[ardaoweo]

Well, it should be noted that the helicopter in question was designed to be used by an organization that couldn't care less about loss of life, as we have again seen in recent years. So I guess this aspect of human life wasn't a big concern to the designers, the military can always get new human resources from Siberia or whatever poor part of the country.