Tupolev Tu-124

Momentum Maintained

With a variety of airliners coming off the production lines (see opposite) Aeroflot entered the 1960s with prospects of expansion and upgrading of equipment in all directions. On 3 January 1960, it took over Polar Aviation (Aviaarktika) and directed attention to the northern routes, to new settlements on the Arctic Sea, and a new route to the Far East. On 24 April, a Tupolev Tu-114 non-stop Moscow-Khabarovsk schedule inauguration immeasurably extended the range potential. On 15 December 1961, a specially-equipped Ilyushin 11-18 became the first airliner to fly to Antarctica, and this aircraft opened up new routes to several African countries during the next few years. The Tupolev Tu-104, too short in range for use on trans­ocean routes, was nevertheless able to carry Aeroflot’s flag to south-east Asia, with a service, opened on 31 January 1962, to Jakarta, via Tashkent, Delhi, and Rangoon. By this time, Aeroflot was carrying more than 20 million passengers each year (with fares at railroad levels) with a total fleet of about 2,000 aircraft.

Junior Jet

The short-haul routes were not neglected. While the U. S.S. R. was a country of vast distances, much of the western parts embraced an area characterized by dozens of cities only an hour’s flight from Moscow. Many of these were of medium size, not large enough to justify 100-seat aircraft such as the Tu-104 or the 11-18. To meet this need, the Tupolev design bureau produced a scaled-down version of the Tu-104, the 44- seat, later 56-seat Tupolev Tu-124, which entered ser­vice on the Moscow — Tallinn (Estonia) route on 2 October 1962. Trailing the French Caravelle by over three years, and a derivative, rather than an original design, it was, however, ahead of British and American short-haul jets by a similar margin.

FIRST GENERATION SHORT-HAUL JETS