In a message dated 7/26/00 11:41:31 AM Eastern Daylight Time,
kristian@chronister.com writes:
<< was a Russian prototype, usually referred to as the Concordski and widely
rumored to have been built using stolen plans from the Concorde, flying at
the Paris Air Show. No commercial Concorde with passengers had crashed until
the recent misfortune. >>
The Tupolev Tu-144 had its first flight on 12/3/68, three months before the
maiden Concord voyage. On 6/3/73, at the Paris Air Show, the pilot lost
control during a steep climb and the plane fell into a dive. The canard tore
loose and punctured a fuel tank, and the plane crashed in flames in the small
town of Goussainville, just four miles from yesterday's crash.
Theories for that crash -- control system failure; a camera carried by one of
the Soviet crew fell and blocked the flight column; or that the pilot lost
control trying to maneuver away from a French military jet that was shadowing
the plane to study its performance for comparison with Concord.
The Soviets put the Tu-144 into domestic use in 1975 as a cargo plane. It
saw brief passenger service in 1977, and was completely yanked in 1985.
There are rumors of another Tu-144 crash, but the Soviets never reported it.
The Tu-144 had much shorter range than the Concord.
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