who bought the tu-144LL ?
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who bought the tu-144LL ?
said concordski was put on ebay for $10 mil 7/2001...ebay backed out for a while per some laws regarding russian aircraft sales here...reportedly sold eventually for $11M...you'd pay that for a mid-size bizjet
...apparently still too much for sir richard, all he offered for the real mccoy was one quid...
...apparently still too much for sir richard, all he offered for the real mccoy was one quid...
I suspect you are referring to the one used by NASA in the "High Speed Research Program" for some tests during 1997. It never left Russia by the way, the tests being done there. It was the same aircraft (the only one to fly after Perestroika in Russia and hence the only one to get an RA- registration compared to the old CCCP).
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From AVweb's news, back in September 2001:
A business with both money and a desire for the unusual was the top bidder for a Russian SST on eBay last week. Yes, you read it right, in amongst the porcelain knickknacks and heaven-only-knows-what-all-else was a genuine Tu-144LL, the last flyable Russian SST. A determined buyer known only as "hihold" was the sole bidder from $2,300,300 to $2,500,000, which is the point he finally met the seller's reserve and the plane became his. For his $2.5 mil, hihold, one Clifford Laughton, the CEO of a new start-up airline called Premier International Airways, will get the aircraft and will pay the costs of having the fuel-guzzling bird flown from the Gromov Flight Test Center in Moscow to his location. An IL-76 Russian transport aircraft will follow the Tu-144 to the buyer's closest Port of Entry and once on the ground, Tupolev mechanics will remove the SST's engines and take them back -- they're the property of the Russian Air Force and not part of the deal.
TU-144
HWBM :
Yes, agree re the NASA programme, but since then there has been some Boeing activity with this aircraft, which they have not said much about. (I was at Gromov/Zhukovsky when this was taking place, and met some of the guys, who, it has to be said, were totally bemused by the whole thing!). There was also some interest from Grumman/Sukhoi re a supersonic biz-jet. Obviously this has evaporated.
So this guy is presumably going to display it somewhere, sans engines?
Ironic, isn't it, that the Russian (read Soviet) and US ventures into the supersonic market both failed, despite the fact that the Russkies (Soviets) were getting the plans direct from Filton in those days.
The TU 144 finished up flying mail & cargo to Almaty, and the US attempt finished its life attached to a church in Florida, before being removed to scrapyard near Cocoa Beach. An ignominious end for both...
Yes, agree re the NASA programme, but since then there has been some Boeing activity with this aircraft, which they have not said much about. (I was at Gromov/Zhukovsky when this was taking place, and met some of the guys, who, it has to be said, were totally bemused by the whole thing!). There was also some interest from Grumman/Sukhoi re a supersonic biz-jet. Obviously this has evaporated.
So this guy is presumably going to display it somewhere, sans engines?
Ironic, isn't it, that the Russian (read Soviet) and US ventures into the supersonic market both failed, despite the fact that the Russkies (Soviets) were getting the plans direct from Filton in those days.
The TU 144 finished up flying mail & cargo to Almaty, and the US attempt finished its life attached to a church in Florida, before being removed to scrapyard near Cocoa Beach. An ignominious end for both...
