These TU154 figures are complete nonsense, and some people really have to get their facts right.
"The regular 154 came out earlier (1973) and it had 17 fatal accidents** between 1973 and 1991, probably with no more than 300 aircraft in operation at any point,- which would also point to a pretty high fatal loss rate per departure."
TU154 and variants started flying roughly the same time as Concorde and was still in production in 2009.
I stand corrected on one point: it flew in 1972, not 1973. I said "between 1973 and 1991" because the discussion above was in regard to Soviet era.
Most crashes are caused at least partially by the human factor. It's best to compare all crashes vs. all crashes. Or at least to exclude terrorist attacks only. If we get the hull loss rate of Soviet-era 154 that is several times higher than all-time hull loss rate of B737 (including all the losses in places like Indonesia, which seems to have become a veritable B737 graveyard recently), either the machine is poorly built, or its pilots and mechanics are poorly trained, or it's some combination of these, and it's really not my objective to assign blame here.