Tu-204 - wrong time, wrong place

hello aviation fans sky here and we're slowly approaching the final of our two pilot history today we will meet another large airliner of this design bureau the tupolev tu-204 is a family of twin-engine passenger airliners developed by the tupolev design bureau in the late 1980s born as a result of the effective work this plane became a good response to the challenges of the time due to technical excellence efficiency and reliability it quickly became one of the most popular on the market by the mid-2000s the number of aircraft exceeded 1000 units soon making the tu-204 the most popular in the history of the USSR in Russia and hmm a beautiful story but it may seem that some real facts do not agree with what I have just said perhaps the fact is that the only true thing of the above history is the name of the aircraft the tupolev tu-204 now I should probably tell how everything happened in reality welcome to the desert yes the real world turned out to be much tougher place and the history of the airliner was not so bright from the very beginning let's take a look at this beginning in 1972 Aeroflot introduced his passengers to the brand-new tu-154 being quite effective for its time this aircraft took its place in the parks of Airlines of different countries and the tupolev design bureau continued on its way and at that moment the question arose what's next the answer to this question was the new trend the airliner families the idea was to create several unified planes of different classes and then underpasses developed families that together would form a complete set from small to large a history had shown the idea was right a confirmation of this can be considered the model lines of born and Airbus a few basic machines and a bunch of their versions choose what you like and take it the first hurl'd of the strength was to be the new medium range twin-engine airliner in fact it was a Whiteman organization to replace the 254 in the future but this bright time quickly ended the world entered the age of wide-body airliners the newest Douglas dc-10 block hit l-1011 Airbus a300 as well as the Soviet l86 appeared in the sky white body airliners were more comfortable could carry more cargo and were potentially better at almost everything well at least everyone thought they were the tupolev concept had changed now the future plane was supposed to be a medium-range wide-body airliner with a capacity of just over 200 passengers and equipped with three engines something similar to the Douglas and Lockheed flagships the idea of creating a family was not abandoned the main model was supposed to be the largest one and based on it the bureau wanted to create both regional vehicles to replace the 204 and yak-42 and a medium-range model to replace the 254 at the same time the number of engines also varied in the end all these ideas crystallized into models between engine 2 204 - 200 and the 3 engine - 204 - 300 but the adventure was not over by the time the question of creating a new generation was already arrived at the government level for the power plant it was decided to abandon the good but agent engines and to create a new more advanced one the project of which received the name d90 at the same time the preference for the three engine scheme remained two inches on a wide-body airliner economical of course but rather weak prospects for such aircraft the first representative of which was the a300 at the time seemed unclear by 1982 the drug design of an aircraft with a capacity of about 208 seats was ready the project had almost reached the finish line almost but no by the time the design draft was ready the two engine concept began to weigh the provenance of the scheme received rather bright examples Bowen lines two models 757 and 767 to the market and the idea of the a300 was continued in the new a310 at the same time the three engine dc-10 did not became a best-seller and a seemingly excellent l-1011 tristar was an epic failure that finished the Lockheed civil aviation business for good the Ministry of aviation industry of the USSR abandoned the old blueprints and came up with a new concept now the idea was to create two aircraft developed by different design bureaus but having common systems and engines the implementation of this concept was to be the medium-range to 204 and long-range lll 96 considering that now the two old force was supposed to have two engines and did not anticipate further increase the tupolev engineers decided that there was no sense in making it a white by the plane therefore it eventually became single-aisle the engine was also redesigned the d90 was brought up 260 kilonewtons and finally received its final name ps90 the tuple of 204 was to build a result of use the most advanced Soviet aeration technology it was decided to start the production at the Liana's care craft factor we're at that time the largest transport in the world the Antonov 124 were already assembled while they were preparing a production line the prototypes were assembled at the tupolev experimental plant on January 2 1989 the plane made its maiden flight however at that time the economy and the political situation in Russia in addition to a massive reduction in funding of the aviation industry made it necessary to significantly shorten the test program at the latest stages of work the tupolev engineers and pilots had to operate the cargo missions on the prototypes just to make some money to buy fuel certification of the tu-204 and its engines were completed by 1994 but the commercial operation only started in 1996 structurally the tu-204 is a rather familiar modern aircraft unlike its predecessor the average person would hardly distinguish this plane from foreign models the aircraft received a fairly effective wing advanced mechanization and the new wingtips it was equipped with a classic tree like landing gear the main gear is equipped with four-wheel reinforced buggies the closest model Boeing 757 has a similar landing gear design basic powerplant - PS 98 turbofans the same as were used on the île 96 there was a foreign alternative but more on that later the tuple of 204 and Illusion 96 was the first Soviet and Russian civil aircraft to receive the fly-by-wire control systems that significantly simplified flight and optimize the design during the development a lot of attention was paid to the carpet and the ergonomics of the interface tupolev did not embrace the Airbus fashion on the side sticks and the plane received a classic yoke nevertheless despite all innovations the flight engineer was not abandoned and the crew of three people remained in the cockpit airplanes can accommodate a different number of passengers depending on the minification but almost all have the same limit 210 fifteen people the cabin has a standard for narrow by the airliners three-plus relied in the economy class and 2+2 in business there was of course quite a lot of modifications to the two to all fours the first version traditionally for tupolev was simply called a to 204 it were in 1989 the serious production ever relative concept in this case of course but still the serious production started with his first highest the model 204 - hundred on the basis of this version various options were created with improved equipment English language cockpits as well as the option - hundredths warning which received a rolls-royce rb211 engines this aircraft will deliver to Egypt and China the tuple of 204 - 200 also known as the - 214 was slightly heavy it increased the payload and the amount of fuel which allowed it to fly a little further the first lash of the tu-204 300 was 6 metres in length its capacity dropped 264 people this was done of course for the sake of increasing the range which reached 4000 miles or 7 thousand 400 kilometers in 2010 the - 204 sm made its maiden flight the wildly improved version the optimized aircraft received updated avionics and modern cockpit for crew of two pilots yes in 2010 the updated ps90 a2 created in collaboration with Brett Whitney was applied as a new power plant in general the tu-204 was quite an advanced aircraft which was supposed to replace the to 154 and potentially become as popular however the collapse of the USSR and major cuts in funding for the industry led to reduction in the test program and problems at the beginning of operations and the difficult financial situation of boss factories and developers did not allow them to solve these problems on time the week development of the after-sales support with a new model led to the fact that the aircraft in anticipation of repairs and spare parts remained out to serve for an unacceptably long time in addition in 1990s many airliners fragments of the old Aeroflot who are unable to purchase new planes and used what they already had the 254 and when some of them eventually did acquire the resources they didn't want to take Chris to the new model but instead bought the already well tried European and American planes another back spot was the marketing the tu-204 in this regard has become a real collection of the concept errors the plane was unlucky from the very beginning when over the years the developers in the government couldn't decide what kind of plane they want to create big small wide-body and narrow-body with three engines or two in the end the airliner which in theory had to start flights in the mid 80s was the decade late and appeared in the mid 90s and while creating the plane as can be seen from the description of modifications the developers were desperately looking for customers creating many models that will not really complement in each other the tu-204 SM which was created in the 2000s fixed many problems and suppressed the previous versions but still could not offer any serious advantages over the boring 77 ng an a320 co airliners the domestic market was too small and the aircraft was not interesting on foreign markets and with the creation of the new Max and neo generations the plane became obsolete at the beginning of operation also as a post scriptum I can add that the tupolev designers at one time made the right choice abandoning the past of a 3 engine wide-body airliner and did not make the same mistake as McDonnell Douglas and Lockheed but even the seemingly successful Boeing 757 also eventually failed the niche which includes the point 7 5 7 tuple F 204 and Airbus a321 turned out to be quite little and from this real only the Airbus airliner is being mass-produced at the moment but it is worth mentioning that according to a number of studies this middle of the market has a certain potential in the near future but it will be a playground for other planes the fate of the tu-204 by the time of the SM model testing was practically predetermined resources of the Russian aviation industry were a directed towards the creation of the ms-21 airliner which is able to complete directly with animals an aircraft of this class but the time of tool force is not yet gone the plane and its modifications the elements and systems of which are almost entirely produced in Russia are in demand from the Russian military and other government structures due to this the production of the aircraft continues in low quantities in total by the beginning of 2018 85 units were produced most of them are used in the parks of government operators in Russia also these aircraft are operated in the parks of several commercial companies in Russia Cuba China Egypt and North Korea and that's it for today s lies a complicated and somewhat sad story coming below what you think about this plane and his fate and do not forget to Like and subscribe to the channel fast flights and soft landings to you [Music] you [Music]

Channel: Skyships Eng

Views: 291,266

Rating: 4.8445902 out of 5

Keywords: Tupolev, Tu-204, Tu-214, Tupolev Tu-204, Tu-204 cockpit, Tu-204 history, Tu-204 documantary, Russian airliner, Soviet airliner

Id: qzgXnv5s1wk

Length: 14min 1sec (841 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 31 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/[deleted]]

thanks for this link, very good channel and lots of info on Tupolevs and Illjushins