PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - Tupolev TU-144
Thread: Tupolev TU-144
View Single Post
Old 15th Oct 2003, 17:44
  #7 (permalink)  
Flip Flop Flyer
 
Join Date: Jan 2002
Location: Around
Age: 56
Posts: 572
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes on 0 Posts
KMH

Have you been sleeping for the past 30 years mate? The Tu-144 only made around 100 commercial flights before it was scrapped. It failed to meet payload/range targets, guzzled fuel at horrendous rates and did in fact crash at the 1972 Paris Air Show (broke up in flight pulling out of a dive, there is a video). It was fitted with canard planes (complete with trailing edge high-lift devices) and new engines after the crash, then started flying between Moscow and Alma-Ata on mail flights - around 100 of them. Only a large handful was ever built, I belive around 7 or so, which are now all in various stages of decay.

NASA and Tupolev brought back one example for test flights, fitted with the engines from a Tu-160 bomber, but those tests are now finished and the aircraft is sitting idle somewhere, sans engines.

To make it short and sweet: If you're gambling on the Tu-144 to revive commercial supersonic flight you're headed for major mental trauma.
Flip Flop Flyer is offline