To many, when they think of supersonic airliners, they instantly think of Concorde. The joint Anglo-French aircraft that served for nearly 30 years, ferrying people across the Atlantic at Mach 2.

In 1973, the Paris Air Show was more than an aviation expo. It was a global stage for a symbolic East versus West confrontation. The Soviets arrived with their pride and joy, the Tu 144, determined to ...

While the French and British were working together to create the Concorde, the Soviets had their own version of the supersonic aircraft, called Tu-144. In total, the Russian made sixteen aircraft, ...

Early in the afternoon of July 25, 2000, Air France Flight 4590 crashed upon takeoff at the Charles de Gaulle Airport outside Paris. All 100 passengers and nine crew members on board, as well as four ...

When the first Tupolev Tu-144 thundered its way into aeronautical history 50 years ago, lifting off from Zhukovksy airfield on the last day of 1968, much of the supersonic programme remained cloaked ...

Not to be outdone by their aviation rivals in the west, the Soviet Union built and briefly flew its own supersonic commercial jet, the Tupolev Tu-144. Sixteen were built and a handful remain. Only one ...

AFTER WEEKS OF rain and fog at Moscow’s Zhukovsky Airfield, site of the Soviet Union’s top flight test center, New Year’s Eve 1968 dawned with more of the same. This was immensely discouraging for ...

Its maiden flight lasted for a little over half an hour and failed to reach the Mach speed it was engineered for. But when the Tupolev Tu-144 successfully took to the air on December 31, 1968, it gave ...