BelArgUSA, thanks a lot for your post! A mighty chunk of slang to add to my file!
1. Yes, I am aware that pprune.org is a UKish forum so most of the slang I will get here will apply to UK flight ops only. I've posted a similar thread on Airline Pilot Central, which is where US flying folks are hanging around but the response was great deal poorer than here. Anyways, I am really grateful to all who shared their stuff and I am actually kind of surpirsed that the response to this thread here was so hugely different from that on the APC forum.
2. We also have plenty of nicknames for aircraft up here in Russia but they are mostly for Soviet-made planes so they won't be of much interest for you. As for Western-made jets, generic nickname for Boeing is "Bobik" (has no meaning in English, just a Russian word which looks closest to "Boeing" and it's actually a popular name for a dog). Airbus is called "Arbuz" (Aarbuuuz), which is "watemelon". But again this is not because this plane looks like a watermelon, it's just a Russian word, which looks closest to "Airbus".
Then we have a couple of nicknames for specific models:
B 737 - "Little Boeing"
B 747 - "A humpy one"
B 777 - "Three axes" ("7" looks like an axe)
Nothing really ingenious, the nicknames for Soviet planes are much more witty but they just won't make sense if translated into English.
Soviet planes you've mentioned:
Tu-134 - Whistle (its engine makes a whistling sound), Fighter Jet (probably because it's pretty fast), Little Tupolev
Tu-154 - Fifty, Steam Engine, Big Tupolev
Il-62 - Log (Timber)
Il-76 - called a "Hump" too
Cheers from your strategic "friend" Russia, the home of vodka-drunk bears with their pawns always on the nuke launch button!
