Tu144

The Tu-144 is a Soviet-era supersonic transport aircraft designed and built by Tupolov Design Bureau in the 1960s. It was developed to contend with Western successors to subsonic airliners and to demonstrate Soviet capability in high-speed civil aviation. The aircraft was intended to carry passengers on long-range routes at speeds well above the speed of sound.

Design and development details include a slender fuselage, a drooped nose for cockpit visibility, and an ogival delta wing. It was powered by twin NK-144 turbojet engines and featured systems and controls typical of late-1960s jet transport design. The Tu-144 went through a rapid development program that produced both prototypes and limited production aircraft.

Production numbers were small, with roughly a dozen to sixteen aircraft built, depending on how variants are counted. Only a limited portion entered any form of scheduled service, and the type was primarily used for flight testing and development rather than extensive commercial operation.

A notable incident during its history occurred when the Tu-144 performed at the Paris Air Show in 1973 and suffered a crash during a demonstration flight. The accident led to public relations setbacks and a reduction in development and marketing ambitions for the type.

In the late 1970s, Aeroflot conducted limited commercial service with the Tu-144 on a Moscow–Almaty route for a short period, but wider use did not materialize. The program largely ended in the early 1980s, with the aircraft subsequently used mainly for research and technical evaluation rather than as a mainstream passenger transporter.

The Tu-144 stands as a significant, if limited, milestone in the history of supersonic transport, contributing to Soviet aerospace knowledge and informing future high-speed aerodynamics studies.