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The
Tupolev Tu-144 is a supersonic passenger jet built by the
Soviet Union as a competitor to the British/French Concorde.

The Tupolev was developed around the same time as Concorde and,
with a little help from a spy in France, its appearance http://www.metacafe.com/watch/385519/tu_144_konkordski/# is
very similar. Due to this, the Western papers of the day gave
it the inspired nickname of “Konkordski”^{#fn:1″ rel=”footnote 1}.

alt="">
Konkordski 77107 on display at Kazan Aviation Production
Complex

Like its namesake, Konkordski wasn’t the aviation success
everyone had hoped for, and only 17 were ever built. A disastrous
crash in 1973 at the Paris Air show sealed the Konkordski’s fate
and they served only 103 domestic flights before being withdrawn
from service.

alt="">
Konkordski 77108 stored at the Samara-Ouchebny Research
Institute

Although nowhere near as famous as Concorde, Konkordski did
achieve it’s share of records: it was the first supersonic
passenger jet to fly (just 2 months before Concorde) and to this
day is still the fastest commercial airliner
ever!

More info on the http://members.tripod.com/tu144/history.html History of
Konkordski, http://www.moninoaviation.com/tu144sn.html full aircraft
list and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tupolev_Tu-144 Wikipedia
page.

Thanks to http://bbs.keyhole.com/ubb/showflat.php/Cat/0/Number/556883/an//page//vc/1
Snoogans and http://virtualglobetrotting.com/map/38433/ Virtual
Globetrotting.

1. These days the “-ski” postfix is most common in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_common_surnames#Poland
   Poland as the masculine form of a name. The feminine form would
   be “Konkordcki”. #fnref:1″ rev=”footnote ↩

Tags: , Konkordski