witch plane had better performance and was more succesful???
i heard that the tu144 was alowed to fly over the soviet union supersonic so
it coullb be more succesfull and all ...

That is a fabulous photo of the pair of them together, like huge Airfix models! Where is that location?

Back to your question of which was the more successful, Overall it has to be Concorde but the Tu-144 has several 'victories' it can point to.

The Tu-144 was the first SST to fly and it was the first to exceed mach 2.

It was also marginally faster (about 100mph) so Tupolev has the claim of first and fastest.

By coincidence the production run of both types ended after 16 aircraft so that ones a tie.

The fact that it was allowed to fly over the USSR isn't really a measure of success, large tracts of the USSR are uninhabited and its not really that different from flying over the Atlantic as far as that goes, it certainly doesn't mean that the Tu-144 was quieter or anything.

In fact it was considerably less efficient than Concorde as it needed to keep its afterburners lit throughout the Supersonic flight regime whereas Concorde could switch its burners off and maintain 'supercruise'.

The ultimate measure of success though must surely be the fact that the Tu-144 made 55 passenger flights in a 7 month period between Oct '77 and June '78 and never carried passengers again, Concorde on the other hand operated supersonic passenger flights on a daily basis for 27 years, beginning in Jan 1976, interrupted only by the tragic loss of the Air France Concorde that was hit by debris on the runway in 2001.

ok thanks
i dont kno where that picture was taken was i just got it of airliners.net
did the tu-144 get out of service because of the airshow crash???

The picture was taken in Sinsheim, Germany. If you go to airliners.net and search the photo database for 'unmuth sinsheim' there are a LOAD of them, including some impressive night shots.

The Tu-144 wasnt removed from service because of the airshow crash, it was removed after a second crash in 1978, a whole 5 years after the airshow crash.

cheers Richard, I'll be sure to go and have a look

Thanks for the new desktop wallpaper JCiS

I would say the Concorde simply because of the 27yr operational history and remarably less accidents than the TU-144.

But in my opinion the Tu-144 was a much better aircraft.

Hi, planes fans.

Don't you think we can NOT compare the "specs" of rivals,
from Russia, because IF they have them, it is because
they stealed/copied the technology ??

If I remember well, Russia have **copies** of:
the Boeing 727, 3 engines.
the VC-10, 4 engines, at the back?
the DC-8 or Boeing 707, 4 engines under wings,
the copy of the Space shuttle ! ! ! the most obvious ! !
the copy of the Fiat car,
the copy of the Packard car,
and so on, and so on. . .

They are a little bit different with choppers. . . B-)
And they are unique with the EKRANOPLANE:
Try IXQUICK with that word. B-)

Blue skies.

The only western aeroplane the Russians copied and produced was the Boeing B-29 and that was under protest by Andrei Tupolev who had his own bomber design which he believed to be superior, the Tu-64.

The Russians did take inspiration from other aircraft, but so did everyone else. Indeed Boeing themselves got the 727 layout from De Havilland in 1958, four years before they flew the 727, when during a visit to Hatfield they were shown the design for the Trident (DH 121).

Boeing also developed the podded engine installation as used on the B-47, B-52 and 707 from captured German research and many of these German designers ended up working in Russia and simply carried on their own work, so who's the copyist?

The VC-10 and Il-62 were concurrent designs so there was no opportunity for any copying as there would be no time to validate the layout if it was simply copied.

The Space Shuttle/Buran is a bit blatant though

The Russians, or at least Beriev, also designed, but did not produce, a copy of the Lockheed S-3 Viking.