Photo: Anna Zvereva
Before the events of August 23rd, 2023, the Embraer Legacy 600/650 was just another mundane twin-engine business jet with some admittedly impressive luxury features on offer. Still, it's not the kind of aircraft that common folks have much reason to pay attention to. But since DNA analysis linked Yevgeny Prigozin, the founder and leader of the Wagner mercenary group, to the remains found at the first hull-loss incident for this jet, it's suddenly at the heart of an international scandal orbiting the larger War in Ukraine.
When these DNA reports indisputably tying the man who tried to overthrow Vladimir Putin two months ago circulated to global news outlets, It forever tarnished the Legacy of a jet with a nearly flawless safety record that included no loss-of-hull incidents on its airframe. Through no fault whatsoever on the part of Embraer, the events of this day might come to this top-quality private jet as the plane that became Prigozin's tomb, at least among war history buffs.
Derived from the Embraer ERJ family of regional passenger jets, the Legacy 600 is one of the most desirable and luxurious biz-jets available. It competes with the likes of Bombardier, Dassault, and Gulfstream in the uber-competitive small-to-medium class business jet sector, one that's very familiar to the Russian oligarchs who founded the Wagner group in 2013. The particular Legacy 600 that claimed the lives of Prigozin, his Wagner co-founder Dmitry Utkin, and its head of logistics and security Valery Chekalov was manufactured by Embraer in Brazil in 2007 before being registered to a Slovenian company and changed hands several times before it was sold to the Wagner group in 2018 and then to its leader Prigozin in 2020.
Dubbed "Putin's Chef" due to his many lucrative catering deals with the Kremlin and its associated organizations, Prigozin's astonishing $1 billion estimated net worth made acquiring the nearly $10 million used aircraft plus the $6,700 per hour operating costs feel like a walk in the park. According to Embraer themselves, the company hadn't conducted maintenance on this Legacy 600 since 2019, owing to international sanctions imposed on the Wagner group resulting from their alleged operations to interfere with the 2018 U.S. Senate elections.
But between 2002 and 2020, not a single accident related to anything other than pilot error had ever been attributed to a Legacy 600-class jet. The only notable incident previously occurred during a mid-air collision between an ExcelAire Legacy 600 and a Gol Transportes Aeros Boeing 737-800, where the Boeing jet crashed, killing all but seven of the passengers aboard while the Legacy landed safely and was promptly repaired.
As Russian authorities continue to comb through the debris field, it's anyone's guess if the true nature of the crash that occurred that day will ever become clear. All investigators have to work with now is whatever data is recovered from its black box, as well as camera phone footage of the jet plummeting to the ground with what appeared to be either a missing wing, vertical stabilizer, or both. The comparatively large debris field, which includes the twin Rolls-Royce AE 3007A2 turbofan engines, appears to indicate either a missile, either from a fighter jet or a surface-to-air missile comlpex, or an onboard bomb was to blame for the catastrophic event. A tragedy that took the lives of seven passengers and three crew.
With the Russian occupation of Ukraine still very much in effect, the loss of one of the war's most important figureheads is bringing unanticipated consequences to the world of private aviation. Because of this war, the reputation of one of the safest business jets in modern aviation will forever be tarnished by a conflict it had nothing to do with.
Derived from the Embraer ERJ family of regional passenger jets, the Legacy 600 is one of the most desirable and luxurious biz-jets available. It competes with the likes of Bombardier, Dassault, and Gulfstream in the uber-competitive small-to-medium class business jet sector, one that's very familiar to the Russian oligarchs who founded the Wagner group in 2013. The particular Legacy 600 that claimed the lives of Prigozin, his Wagner co-founder Dmitry Utkin, and its head of logistics and security Valery Chekalov was manufactured by Embraer in Brazil in 2007 before being registered to a Slovenian company and changed hands several times before it was sold to the Wagner group in 2018 and then to its leader Prigozin in 2020.
Dubbed "Putin's Chef" due to his many lucrative catering deals with the Kremlin and its associated organizations, Prigozin's astonishing $1 billion estimated net worth made acquiring the nearly $10 million used aircraft plus the $6,700 per hour operating costs feel like a walk in the park. According to Embraer themselves, the company hadn't conducted maintenance on this Legacy 600 since 2019, owing to international sanctions imposed on the Wagner group resulting from their alleged operations to interfere with the 2018 U.S. Senate elections.
But between 2002 and 2020, not a single accident related to anything other than pilot error had ever been attributed to a Legacy 600-class jet. The only notable incident previously occurred during a mid-air collision between an ExcelAire Legacy 600 and a Gol Transportes Aeros Boeing 737-800, where the Boeing jet crashed, killing all but seven of the passengers aboard while the Legacy landed safely and was promptly repaired.
As Russian authorities continue to comb through the debris field, it's anyone's guess if the true nature of the crash that occurred that day will ever become clear. All investigators have to work with now is whatever data is recovered from its black box, as well as camera phone footage of the jet plummeting to the ground with what appeared to be either a missing wing, vertical stabilizer, or both. The comparatively large debris field, which includes the twin Rolls-Royce AE 3007A2 turbofan engines, appears to indicate either a missile, either from a fighter jet or a surface-to-air missile comlpex, or an onboard bomb was to blame for the catastrophic event. A tragedy that took the lives of seven passengers and three crew.
With the Russian occupation of Ukraine still very much in effect, the loss of one of the war's most important figureheads is bringing unanticipated consequences to the world of private aviation. Because of this war, the reputation of one of the safest business jets in modern aviation will forever be tarnished by a conflict it had nothing to do with.
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