Russian Supersonic Jet May Fly in 2010s
M O S C O W, July 13 -- Engineers are working full out on developing an updated version of Russia’s mothballed Tupolev supersonic “Concordsky” passenger jet, the project’s chief designer said today.
Alexander Pukhov told Reuters in a telephone interview that the new plane, dubbed the Tu-244, could make its maiden flight early in the next decade.
“We are continuing at top pace with research and development on the creation of a second-generation supersonic passenger plane, the Tu-244,” he said.
Pukhov said the goal was to create a plane capable of carrying 300 to 400 passengers up to 6,250 miles at nearly double the speed of sound.
Belatedly Rising From the Ashes
The Anglo-French Concorde, currently the world’s only supersonic passenger airliner, travels at just above twice the speed of sound, but carries only 128 passengers and has a maximum range of just under 3,350 miles.
Pukhov gave no financial details about the Tu-244 program, but said Tupolev was hoping to receive support from U.S. aerospace giant Boeing Co. for the jet’s development.
The jet’s predecessor, the 160-seat Tu-144, made its maiden flight on Dec. 31, 1968, just days before the Concorde — from which it took its nickname — took off for the first time.
The Tu-144 carried out several trial flights between Moscow and the Central Asian city of Almaty in Kazakhstan in the early 1970s, but the project was shelved after a 1973 crash in France at the Le Bourget air show that killed 13 people.
Engineers only resumed work on Russia’s supersonic aircraft program in 1998 and earlier this year introduced a Tu-144 that was converted with the help of Boeing and U.S. space agency NASA into a flying aviation research laboratory.
“We derive much from our flying laboratory ... [but] our work could be faster and more productive if the Americans resumed the supersonic plane research that they dropped in 1998,” Pukhov said, adding: “We think they just need a time out.”
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