Tu-104 | |
---|---|
General information | |
Type | Narrow-body jet airliner |
Manufacturer | Tupolev OKB, Kharkiv Aviation Factory, Kazan Aircraft Production Association, Omsk Aviation Plant 166 |
Designer | |
Status | Retired |
Primary users | Aeroflot |
Number built | 201 |
History | |
Manufactured | 1956–1960 |
Introduction date | 15 September 1956 (Aeroflot) |
First flight | 17 June 1955 |
Retired | 1981 |
Developed from | Tupolev Tu-16 |
Variants | Tupolev Tu-110 Tupolev Tu-124 |
The Tupolev Tu-104 (NATO reporting name: Camel) is a medium-range, narrow-body, twin turbojet-powered Soviet airliner. It was the second to enter regular service, behind the British de Havilland Comet and was the only jetliner operating in the world from 1956 to 1958, when the British jetliner was grounded due to safety concerns. [1]
In 1957, Czechoslovak Airlines – ČSA (now Czech Airlines), became the first airline in the world to fly a route exclusively with jet airliners, using the Tu-104A variant between Prague and Moscow. In civilian service, the Tu-104 carried over 90 million passengers with Aeroflot (then the world's largest airline), and a lesser number with ČSA, while it also was operated by the Soviet Air Force. Its successors included the Tu-124, Tu-134, and Tu-154.
At the beginning of the 1950s, the Soviet Union's Aeroflot airline needed a modern airliner with better capacity and performance than the piston-engined aircraft then in operation. The design request was filled by the Tupolev OKB, which based their new airliner on its Tu-16 "Badger" strategic bomber. The wings, engines, and tail surfaces of the Tu-16 were retained with the airliner, but the new design adopted a wider, pressurised fuselage designed to accommodate 50 passengers. The prototype build in MMZ 'Opit' first flew on June 17, 1955, with Yu.L. Alasheyev at the controls. It was fitted with a drag parachute to shorten the landing distance by up to 400 m (1,300 ft), since at the time, not many airports had sufficiently long runways. [1] The first serial TU-104 took off on 5 November 1955. [2]
The Tu-104 was powered by two Mikulin AM-3 turbojets placed in the wing roots (resembling the configuration of the de Havilland Comet). The crew consisted of two pilots, a navigator (seated in the glazed "bomber" nose), a flight engineer, and a radio operator (later eliminated). The airplane raised great curiosity by its lavish "Victorian" interior – so-called by some Western observers – due to the materials used: mahogany, copper, and lace. [1]
Tu-104 pilots were trained on the Il-28 bomber, followed by mail flights on an unarmed Tu-16 bomber painted in Aeroflot colors, between Moscow and Sverdlovsk. Pilots with previous Tu-16 experience transitioned into the Tu-104 with relative ease. The Tu-104 was considered difficult to fly, as it was heavy on controls and quite fast on final approach, and at low speeds displayed a tendency to stall, a feature common with highly swept wings. Experience with the Tu-104 led the Tupolev Design Bureau to develop the world's first turbofan series-built airliner, the Tupolev Tu-124, designed for local markets, and subsequently the more commercially successful Tu-134.[ citation needed ]
On 15 September 1956, the Tu-104 began revenue service on Aeroflot's Moscow-Omsk-Irkutsk route, replacing the Ilyushin Il-14. The flight time was reduced from 13 hours and 50 minutes to 7 hours and 40 minutes, and the new jet dramatically increased the level of passenger comfort. [1] By 1957, Aeroflot had placed the Tu-104 in service on routes from Vnukovo Airport in Moscow to London, Budapest, Copenhagen, Beijing, Brussels, Ottawa, Delhi, and Prague.[ citation needed ]
In 1957, ČSA Czechoslovak Airlines became the only export customer for the Tu-104, placing the aircraft on routes to Moscow, Paris, and Brussels. ČSA bought six Tu-104As (four new and two used aircraft) configured for 81 passengers. Three of these were subsequently written off (one due to a refueling incident in India and another to a pilot error without fatalities). [1]
In 1959, a Tu-104 was leased to Sir Henry Lunn Ltd. (Lunn Poly) of London, who used the aircraft to transport holiday-makers to Russia with a 4.5-hour flight time.[ citation needed ]
Whilst the Tu-104 continued to be used by Aeroflot throughout the 1960s and 1970s, the safety record of the aircraft was poor in comparison to Western jetliners (16 of 96 aircraft were lost in accidents). The Tu-104 was unreliable, heavy, and very unstable with poor control response and an inclination to Dutch roll. Poor design aerodynamics of the wings resulted in a propensity to stall with little or no warning and a dangerous tendency to pitch up violently before stalling and entering an irrecoverable dive. Due to the fear of inadvertent stalls, aircrew flew approaches above the recommended approach speed, landing at 270–300 km/h (170–190 mph), nearly 50 km/h (31 mph) faster. At least two accidents were attributed to the pitch-up phenomenon, prompting changes to the design of the aircraft and operating procedures, but the problem remained. Aeroflot retired the Tu-104 from civilian service in March 1979 following a fatal accident at Moscow, but several aircraft were transferred to the Soviet military, which used them as staff transports and to train cosmonauts in zero gravity. After a military Tu-104 crash in February 1981 killed 50 people (17 were senior army and naval staff), the type was permanently removed from service. The last flight of the Tu-104 was a ferry flight to Ulyanovsk Aircraft Museum on 11 November 1986. [3]
Data from: [1]
According to the American Flight Safety Foundation, between 1958 and 1981, 16 Tu-104s were lost in crashes out of 37 aircraft written off (hull loss rate = 18%) with a total of 1140 fatalities. [4]
From this listing of crashes due to mechanical or pilot error, the total number of deaths is 939, without the addition the Borispol Airport 1976 incident. Shot down or bombed airplanes are not in the total.
Data from Tupolev Tu-104: Aeroflot's first jet, [56] Tupolew / Tupolev Tu-104 [57]
General characteristics
Performance
Tu-104 is depicted on Soviet postage stamps of 1958 and 1969.
Related development
Aircraft of comparable role, configuration, and era
Related lists
The 1985 Zolochiv mid-air collision occurred on 3 May 1985 between Aeroflot Flight 8381 (Tu-134) and Soviet Air Force Flight 101 (An-26).
Aeroflot Flight 5143 was a domestic scheduled Karshi–Ufa–Leningrad passenger flight that crashed near Uchkuduk, Uzbek SSR, Soviet Union, on 10 July 1985. The crash killed all 200 occupants on board. Investigators determined that crew fatigue was a factor in the accident.
Aeroflot Flight 4225 was a Tupolev Tu-154B-2 on a scheduled domestic passenger flight from Alma-Ata Airport to Simferopol Airport on 8 July 1980. The aircraft had reached an altitude of no more than 500 feet when the airspeed suddenly dropped because of thermal currents it encountered during the climb out. This caused the airplane to stall less than 5 kilometres from the airport, crash and catch fire, killing all 156 passengers and 10 crew on board. To date, it remains the deadliest aviation accident in Kazakhstan. At the time, the crash was the deadliest involving a Tupolev Tu-154 until Aeroflot Flight 3352 crashed in 1984 killing 178
The following is a list of accidents and incidents experienced by Aeroflot during the 1980s. The deadliest accident the carrier experienced in this decade occurred in July 1985, when Flight 5143, a Tupolev Tu-154B-2, stalled en route and crashed near Uchkuduk, then located in the Uzbek SSR, claiming the lives of all 200 occupants aboard the aircraft. The second deadliest accident the company went through in the decade took place in October 1984, when Flight 3352, a Tupolev Tu-154B-1, hit snowploughs upon landing at Omsk Airport, killing 174 of 179 people on board plus four people on the ground. Both accidents combined left a death toll of 378 casualties and involved a Tupolev Tu-154, ranking as the worst ones involving the type, as of February 2012.
Aeroflot Flight 1691 crashed near Moscow Vnukovo Airport on 17 March 1979 killing 58 of the 119 people on board. The Tupolev Tu-104B operating the flight was overloaded and the crew received a false fire alarm.
Aeroflot Flight 964 was a flight operated by Aeroflot from Kutaisi Airport, Georgia to Domodedovo Airport, Moscow, Russian SFSR. On 13 October 1973, the Tupolev Tu-104 operating on the route crashed during its approach to Moscow, killing all 122 passengers and crew on board. It remains the deadliest accident involving a Tupolev Tu-104.
Aeroflot Flight 3932 was a flight operated by Aeroflot from Koltsovo Airport to Omsk Tsentralny Airport. On 30 September 1973, the Tupolev Tu-104 operating the route crashed shortly after takeoff from Sverdlovsk, killing all 108 passengers and crew on board.
Aeroflot Flight 2003 was operated on 3 January 1976 by a Tupolev Tu-124, registration СССР-45037, when it crashed 7 km (4.3 mi) after take-off from Moscow–Vnukovo Airport, on a domestic flight to Minsk-1 International Airport, and Brest Airport, Belarus. The crash killed all sixty-one on board and one in a house on the ground.
Aeroflot Flight 3843 was a Soviet Union commercial flight that crashed on January 13, 1977, after a left engine fire near Almaty Airport. All 90 people on board perished in the crash.
Aeroflot Flight 2415 was a regularly scheduled passenger flight from Moscow to Leningrad that crashed shortly after takeoff on 28 November 1976. The cause of the accident was attributed to crew disorientation as a result of artificial horizon failure in low visibility conditions.
Aeroflot Flight 3739 was a regularly scheduled Russian domestic flight from Irkutsk to Pulkovo Airport in Saint Petersburg that crashed during takeoff from Irkutsk International Airport on 9 February 1976. Twenty-four of the 114 people on board died in the accident.
Aeroflot Flight 1912 was a scheduled domestic Aeroflot passenger flight on the Odessa-Kiev (Kyiv)-Chelyabinsk-Novosibirsk-Irkutsk-Khabarovsk-Vladivostok route that crashed on 25 July 1971, making a hard landing at Irkutsk Airport. It touched down 150 metres (490 ft) short of the runway, breaking the left wing and catching fire. Of the 126 people on board the aircraft, 29 survived.
Aeroflot Flight 513 was a domestic scheduled passenger flight operated by Aeroflot that crashed during takeoff from Kuybyshev Airport in the Soviet Union on 8 March 1965, resulting in the deaths of 30 passengers and crew. It was the first fatal accident involving a Tupolev Tu-124.
Aeroflot Flight 109 was a scheduled domestic passenger flight from Moscow to Chita with stopovers in Chelyabinsk, Novosibirsk, and Irkutsk. On the final leg of the route on 18 May 1973 a terrorist hijacked the aircraft, demanding to be flown to China; the terrorist's bomb detonated in flight after he was shot by the air marshal.
Aeroflot Flight 2022 was a scheduled Soviet domestic passenger flight between Vilnius Airport in Lithuanian SSR and Vnukovo International Airport in Moscow, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union that crashed on 16 December 1973, killing 51 people on board. The flight suffered a loss of control as a result of a malfunction of its elevator, causing it to crash as it made its final descent into Moscow. At the time of the crash it was the worst accident in aviation history involving a Tupolev Tu-124 since it entered service with Aeroflot in 1962.
The 1958 Aeroflot Тu-104 Kanash crash occurred on 17 October 1958 when a Tupolev Tu-104A operated by Aeroflot flying an international route from Beijing to Moscow crashed in bad weather near the town of Kanash, Chuvashia, Soviet Union, four hundred miles east of Moscow, killing all 80 people on board. The flight was carrying high-level diplomatic delegations from numerous Soviet aligned countries such as China, East Germany, and Czechoslovakia. It was just the second fatal accident involving the Tu-104 which had been introduced into Aeroflot's inventory two years earlier, and the deadliest in the airline's history until the crash of Aeroflot Flight 902 in 1962.
Aeroflot Flight 773 was a scheduled domestic Soviet Union passenger flight from Moscow to Simferopol that crashed following a bomb explosion on 10 October 1971.
Aeroflot Flight 012 was a scheduled international passenger flight from Beijing, China to Moscow, Soviet Union on Saturday, July 13, 1963, which crashed on landing at a scheduled stopover in Irkutsk. 33 of the 35 people on board died in the crash.
Aeroflot Flight 2420 was a passenger flight from Leningrad-Shosseynaya Airport to Sheremetyevo International Airport that, on April 23, 1973, was hijacked by a passenger demanding to go to Stockholm. The crew returned to Leningrad but the hijacker detonated the bomb, killing himself and the mechanic, who had gone out to negotiate with the hijacker.
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