President Tsakhia Elbegdorj expressed deep condolences to Polish president Kaczynski’s family, the relatives of the victims, and the Polish people, after a plane crash in Russia last Saturday killed Mr Kaczynski, along with his wife, and many members of the country political and military elite.

All ninety-six passengers, who included the entire high command of the Polish armed forces and Poland’s central bank governor—perished as their Russian-built Tupolev-154 aircraft crashed in heavy fog while trying to land outside Smolensk, in western Russia. The delegation was on its way to commemorate the execution of some 22,000 Poles by Soviet secret police in 1940.

According to the BBC, there had been calls for Polish leaders to upgrade their planes and the presidential plane itself had known few mechanical difficulties in the late 2008. A problem with its steering mechanism had delayed the plane’s departure from Mongolia, forcing Mr. Kaczynski to take a charter flight to Tokyo. But the aircraft had recently undergone a major overhaul completed in December and including the repair of the plane’s three engines. Furthermore, the next major service was due in six years.

An expert on Russian aviation, Paul Duffy, who assessed the safety record of the Tu-154 in 2004, said that of the 28 Russian planes lost in accidents up to that date - a figure about normal for the quantity, years of service and technology of the type, in his view - few had crashed because of technical failure.

The Tupolev-154 was for more than a quarter of a century the backbone of Russia’s and the Soviet Union’s air transport system. About 1,000 were built, and some still remain in service in Russia and countries that were once part of the Soviet bloc.

Nevertheless and as an indication of its ageing design, the Chinese government decided in 2001 to withdraw the Tu-154 from its airlines, and Aeroflot took the decision to phase them out more recently, saying their high fuel consumption made them uneconomic.

The Tu-154 is now no longer in production as Russian airlines are not interested in newer Tupolevs, described as obsolete in comparison with Western planes. Aeroflot, for example, now buys the vast majority of its aircraft from Boeing and Airbus.