World's first supersonic passenger aircraft. First flight: 31 december 1968.
It took off 3 months before the French-English Concorde. Despite a common opinion, Tu-144 is not a copy of Concorde. Both planes have similar shapes because of similar flight conditions. In fact, these aircrafts are very different. Tu-144 is bigger and faster than Concorde - while Concorde mainly flies over Atlantic ocean, Tupolev 144 was designed to overfly inhabited areas so it flies at higher altitude to decrease noise from the supersonic shockwave. That is what determined its size and power. In fact, Tu-144 was created using the experience of working on similar projects in Tupolev and Sukhoi design bureaux : Tu-125, Tu-135 and Sukhoi T-4. Roughly comparing Concorde and Tu-144 one can say that Concorde got better engines and Tu-144 - better aerodynamics.
17 Tu-144 were built. Two of them crashed - one at Bourget airshow in 1973, another - in 1978 in a test flight. The plane finaly entered the service in the end of 1975. Following Aeroflot's tradition, it served about a year as mail cargo before starting passenger transportation. The first regular passenger flight took place at 14 february 1977. It relied Moscow and Alma-Ata (3200km at 2200km/h). A little more than a year after (may 1978) the plane was retired from the service because of economical reasons. Some planes were sold to museums.
NASA and Boeing developped a joint program with Tupolev constructor bureau in 1998, they made Tu-144 fly again as a flying laboratory (Tu-144LL).
There were four versions of Tu-144.
1. Tu-144 - the first prototype (1)
2. Tu-144S - the serial version (10)
3. Tu-144D - the same as Tu-144S but with better engines (6)
4. Tu-144LL - flying lab based on Tu-144D (1)
Tu-144S is quite different from the first prototype - about 6m longer, 2m higher and wider, carries 150 passengers (instead of 120), has different main gear (2x4 scheme instead of 3x2). Tu-144 has all the engines in the same block, Tu-144S got them splitted in two blocks. And a very characteristic difference - Tu-144S has canards, the prototype doesn't.
Tu-144S CCCP-77110 was one of few planes that really performed regular flights between Moscow and Alma-Ata.
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FSDS model and textures by Samdim. This model was only tested with FS2000. Normally, there shouldn't be any particular problem of flying it within FS2002. But an adopted special FS2002 version will follow.
Sounds and panel are from the default Concorde - did I say these planes are very different ? :o)
