Aircraft Yak-40. Passenger planes of the USSR. Yakovlev Design Bureau

Usually, when we hear about civil aviation planes, we present huge airbuses that can fly on thousands of kilometers. However, more than forty percent of air travel is carried out on local air lines, the length of which is 200-500 kilometers, and sometimes they are measured only tens of kilometers. It was for such purposes that the Yak-40 was created. About this unique aircraft and will be discussed in the article.

Many times the first

Yak-40 (photo shown in the article, demonstrates this aircraft) became the first in the Soviet Union and in the world passenger jet plane, which was intended for operation on local airlines. It became the first Soviet airplane that received a certificate of airworthiness in Western countries before the appearance of a similar certification in our country. Yak-40 was the first domestic airbus to receive certificates in Germany and Italy. He was also the first of Soviet aircraft to pass all the standards of airworthiness of England BCAR and the USA - FAR-25. The certification work for this aircraft contributed to the acceleration of the organization of the aviation register in the USSR, the adoption of airworthiness standards, and the development by our industry of a number of units and materials that comply with the norms of the "West". In addition, it became the first passenger airliner for the design bureau named after Yakovlev.

The first buyer and feedback from specialists

Italy became the first country in the world to acquire the Yak-40. She also organized a presentation of the high performance characteristics of this machine. Piloted by test pilot MG Zavyalov and Italian pilots, the plane made a flight from the capital of Italy to Australia. This route was overcome without any failures and breakdowns. In April 1970, the French magazine Aviation Magazine noted that the Yak-40 is original in design, in size and flight characteristics. In the West there is practically no airplane that could be counterposed to a Russian newcomer. In the US, only the development of similar projects, the implementation of which was to take place only a few years.

All world experts gave the highest rating to the Russian aircraft and Yakovlev Design Bureau.

Creating an Aircraft

The development of the Yak-40 engineers began in April, 65-th year of the last century. The purpose of creating a new aircraft was to replace obsolete piston models Il-12, Il-14 and Li-2, which worked on local airlines. Soviet aircraft builders only needed one year to design and build a prototype. And so, on October 21, 1966, the test pilot Arseniy Kolosov was first put into the air prototype - Yak-40. The peculiarity of the aircraft was the ability to take off from the ground airfields. This contributed to the excessive safety factor of the aircraft's construction, laid in it by engineers Yakovlev Design Bureau.

"Fighter of kerosene", or "Iron stub"

Yak-40 (photo above) is the simplest machine designed for flight and ground personnel, with medium qualifications. Behind him were two nicknames - "Iron Stub" (for relatively small size and abundant smoking powerplants) and "Fighter kerosene" (for high fuel consumption). This airbus has a very high reliability, as well as safety in operation. Yak-40 is able to take off if one of the three engines fails and fly on one of the power units. At unprepared airfields, the maintenance staff is facilitated by an autonomous launcher, a flap ladder, and a high controllability of the machine. The placement of engines in the tail of the fuselage significantly reduced the level of vibration and noise.

Labor achievements

In total, the Soviet aviation industry produced 1011 units of the Yak-40 model. The release was stopped in 1981, but the life of the plane did not end there. More than forty years on the world's air routes - is it not the best confirmation of the reliability of the machine, the correctness of the technical solutions to the complex problems that arose when creating this model! And the designers and technologists of the Minsk Aircraft Repair Plant not only provided the second life of the aircraft, but together with the specialists of the Yakovlev Design Bureau, new modifications were created-flying laboratories, which recently acquired great importance in the national economy of the country. In Russia, the aircraft found a very wide application. So, by the middle of the seventies the Yak-40 completely superseded the veterans Il-12, Il-14 and Li-2 from local airlines. Having mastered flights to more than three hundred settlements of the country, these workers by 1988 transported more than eighty million passengers. And the history of this aircraft is still not finished. Experience in the operation of this model in our and eighteen foreign countries has accurately shown the fallibility of the decision to remove the Yak-40 aircraft from production. Thus, the replacement of power units with more economical modern engines would increase the production and export of this aircraft.

Export

The delivery of the first Yak-40 aircraft for export was started in 1970, just four years after the take-off of the prototype model. For ten years, 125 units of various variants of layouts and modifications were sold to the countries of Asia, Europe and the Republic of Cuba. The export models compared with the serial models had a number of differences in the composition of domestic and flight-navigation equipment. These passenger planes of the USSR delivered to eighteen countries of the world: Angola, Afghanistan, Bulgaria, Hungary, Vietnam, Zambia, Italy, Cambodia, Cuba, Laos, Maldas Republic, Poland, Syria, Germany, Equatorial Guinea, Ethiopia, Yugoslavia. In 2000, the Kamchatka airline sold one plane to Honduras. Since 1967, the Yak-40 has been a participant in all aviation salons in England, Germany, Japan, Italy, France, Sweden and other countries. This legendary airplane with demonstration flights of more than five hundred thousand kilometers visited many countries not only in Europe, but also in Asia, America, Africa and Australia. It should be noted that the Yak-40 is the first Soviet airliner to be sold to capitalist countries with its own developed aviation industry. These planes are still in operation in the airlines of sixteen countries.

Technical portrait

Let us now consider the technical characteristics. Yak-40, according to passport data, is intended for flights with a length of one and a half thousand kilometers. The wing has a fairly large area - 70 square meters, which allowed to abandon the system of very complex multi-slot flaps and slats. The cruising speed is 510 km / h. The basic idea of the aircraft design was simplicity, a combination of three jet engines and a large wing, high take-off and landing characteristics. Pulling power of the power unit is one and a half tons. Another advantage of the power plant is the middle engine, which is located in the fuselage, it has a reversible thrust - a special device that allows you to change the direction of the jet of exhaust gas when the aircraft brakes. This installation has allowed to reduce the mileage of the car when landing up to 400 meters. And the flaps for the reverse are the accessories not of the engine, but of the aircraft. This is very important for unifying the power plant and simplifying the replacement of the average unit. The chassis of the car is equipped with a soft damping system, this reduces the pressure on the surface of the runway. All this allowed the aircraft to take off and land safely on airfields with a ground covering.

In the cockpit there are two people: a commander and a co-pilot, but if necessary, you can install a third seat. The cabin windows have special electric heating. Salon Yak-40 has one that accommodates from 27 to 32 passengers. The aircraft is equipped with modern flight radio electronic navigation equipment, which allows you to fly day and night, in fairly difficult weather conditions. The equipment includes: autopilot, air horizon, course system, magnetic compass, two automatic radio compasses, landline landing system, radio altimeter for low altitudes. The aircraft is equipped with a very effective air-thermal system, which prevents icing of the hull. Radio-weather radar helps to detect the presence of thunderstorm fronts along the flight path. According to the passport data, the life of the airliner is thirty thousand hours, and the service life is up to 25 years.

The second youth

In 1999, Yakovlev Design Bureau engineers carried out studies and calculations that showed that the operational life of aircraft could be doubled with the reinforcement of the design and the completion of the glider. The life extension program will allow companies to postpone the need to purchase new aircraft, which will save considerable funds. The modernization program includes the replacement of engines with economical power units.

Disasters

A lot of people, and even those who regularly use the services of air carriers, are afraid to fly. And regular air crashes contribute to the development of these phobias. Such people are useless to show statistical data, according to which, in automobile accidents, much more perishes than in air crashes. This attitude is easily explained, because when the plane crashes, even if they happen very rarely, dozens of people are killed at the same time. This is always a shock, not only for close victims, but also for strangers. Apparently, fear is also due to the fact that the passenger can not change anything, nothing depends on him, he gives himself and his life in the hands of the pilot and the soulless machine.

So, let's consider the statistics of losses of Yak-40 airliners. Disasters and aircraft losses for other reasons for more than 40 years of history of this model exceeded the 10 percent barrier. So, from the beginning of operation 117 planes were lost. Of these, 46 vehicles were destroyed for various reasons, most often because of errors by pilots or air traffic controllers. The remaining 71 Yak-40 were damaged for one reason or another, including planes destroyed during the hostilities in various hot spots on the planet. By the way, the last such car, which was lost, is an airliner damaged during the battle for Donetsk airport on May 26, 2014.

Aircraft Yakovlev

Yakovlev's design bureau has a rich history. From its walls came a lot of different machines, from military aircraft to passenger airliners. There are both sports and special purpose models, for example, for training pilots. Consider some of them, for example the Yak-42. This model was developed in the mid-70s of the last century for flights on the USSR's short-haul airways. Commercial operation of this aircraft began in the 80th year. During its serial production in 1980-2002, 194 aircraft were built. Of these, 64 units of the basic configuration of the Yak-42 and 130 - in the upgraded version of the Yak-42D - increased take-off mass and range. The cruising speed is 700 km / h. The aircraft is designed for a maximum range of four thousand kilometers. The passenger cabin is designed for 120 seats. This aircraft does not need advertising, its services speak for themselves. After all, he set nine world records! So, in one of them, the Yak-42, intended for near lines, could overcome the distance from the capital of Russia to Khabarovsk without landing. Surprising is the fact that before designing the Yak-40 and Yak-42 design bureau Yakovlev development of multi-passenger passenger airliners did not do at all. Their main specialization is educational, sports and military fighter planes.

Airplane Yak-18

This aircraft is a descendant of UT-2L of the 44th year of the last century. It is intended for initial training of pilots. In the postwar years, the Yak-18 became the first mass educational apparatus. In his concept, equipment and design, the idea of flying in difficult weather conditions and at night was expressed. The aircraft is equipped with a power unit with a capacity of 160 liters. With a variable pitch aeromechanical screw. The construction of the fuselage is a proprietary type of steel pipes. The nose part is closed by the covers of the production hatches, and the tail is covered with linen. Stabilizers and keels have a metal frame with very rigid profiled socks. The wing is two-spruce, detachable, with a center wing. The detachable consoles and the entire center wing to the first spar have a rigid skin, and the rest is covered with a cloth. In the Yak-18 model, all the shortcomings of its predecessor were eliminated, it is a very stable and easily controlled aircraft, and has good flight characteristics. The maximum speed of this aircraft is 257 km / h, the climb rate is 4 m / s, the maximum flight altitude is four thousand meters, the flight range is one thousand kilometers, the landing speed is 85 km / hour. Yak-18 is provided with a number of various instruments, making possible night and "blind" flights.

The Yak-18t is a modification of the Yak-18. It is a light multi-purpose aircraft. It is one of the safest aircraft used in flying schools. As it was officially said at one of the flight-technical conferences, 650 Yak-18t machines flew more than 1.5 million hours without serious accidents due to technical fault. In modern performance, this aircraft is versatile, it can be passenger, training, sanitation, transport. In addition, it is used for patrolling oil and gas pipelines, power transmission lines, highways and forests, as well as for transporting three passengers for a distance of up to five hundred kilometers.

Sports aircraft from Yakovlev Design Bureau

May 8, 1979 in the sky in the area of Tushino airfield appeared a small flying machine with bright red wings. The plane with a slight rumbling famously performed aerobatics: barrels, loops, coups. An experienced eye would immediately note that this is not the usual sporting Yak-50 for locals, but a different model. The large forward pilot cabin lamp pointed to the fact that this is a double unit. When approaching the landing, it was possible to distinguish other differences: the landing flap and the landing gear of the chassis. This was a new brainchild from the engineers of the Yakovlev Design Bureau-Yak-52, an aircraft capable of meeting the most diverse and conflicting demands. And this is understandable, because for the sports-training apparatus you need minimum stability reserves, small efforts that the pilot must attach to the handle of the machine control. He should easily perform the spinning figures of aerobatics. And as an aircraft for primary education, on the contrary, it must be very stable and difficult to manage and should not break into a tailspin.

On the device for training flights on instruments, a fairly large set of navigation and flight equipment should be installed, and for the sports version it will be just an extra load. With all these difficulties, a group of engineers and designers collided. And yet, the aircraft designers coped with the task posed "perfectly" and in the shortest possible time: the Yak-52 was built in less than six months. This is a two-piece all-metal monoplane. The fuselage is semi-monocoque, it has a working metal sheathing. It connects to the frame with a blind rivet. The wing is single-spar, equipped with landing flaps suspended on the ramrod loops and controlled by pneumatic cylinders. The tail plumage is free-bearing. Stabilizer and keel are made on the basis of a two-spruce scheme. Yak-52 is equipped with a nine-cylinder piston star-shaped power unit with a capacity of 360 liters. from. With automatic variable pitch propeller. Navigation and flight equipment allows you to fly in very difficult weather conditions. In addition to the standard set of instruments, this model includes a course system, an ultrashort wave radio system and an automatic radio compass. If the performance of aerobatics figures is to be performed, unnecessary navigation and flight equipment is dismantled.