Recent news coverage of Russian Prime Minister Putin on board an aerial firefighting mission gave him a chance for media attention and me a chance to look at an airplane I'd never heard of before, the Be-200. "But Aviatrix, didn't you fly one of those?" No that was a 100, and you're not supposed to have those specifics, and the code for the King Air 200 is BE20. This is a Russian Beriev Be-200.
Here's a picture. More at the same site.
It turns out that Putin was in a thirty-seven tonne, high wing, twin-engine, amphibious jet. Honestly if you told me that yesterday I would have thought you were stringing randomly selected airplane descriptive terms together. Amphibious as in you can land this 68-passenger jet on a lake without the nuisance of having to declare an emergency, and then you can take off again without having to get a new airplane. Assuming you have a big enough lake, but the Russians have big lakes. And freaking big floatplanes.
It's apparently built to Western safety standards, and from the Airliners.net and news story cockpit photos you can see it has EFIS screens and western-style standby instruments, including an AI with the blue on the top. The Russians build some cool airplanes.
9 comments:
They have another plane that isn't really a plane (but I forget the proper term). It flies within ground effect over the water and was developed for the Black Sea. Much much faster than boats, but not as expensive (or as difficult) as a real airplane.
Colin: The word is Экраноплан, (ekranoplan) I don't know if there's an English equivalent, because it would be something like "planeplane" which just sounds stupid. And ekranoplani are stupendous, not stupid.
Wikipedia to the rescue: acranoplane. There is even a picture of the Sea Eagle there
Also called "Wing-in-Ground-Effect" or WIGE vehicles, in English. Ekranoplan sounds cooler.
At one point I remember Popular Mechanics had a "proposed" trans-oceanic WIGE so huge it used 747 fuslages for outrigger floats. I want the drugs they give to PopMech writers!
Here's another Wikipedia article; it's on the MD-160, a massive ekranoplan with 8 turbojet engines mounted high and forward: Lun-class ekranoplan. Follow the links at the bottom of the article to see some extreme closeups of the decaying aircraft as it now sits, unused.
I chuckled at the comment about building the sea-jet to "Western safety standards..." or however it was worded. I wonder what the normal Russian standards are and if Russians have less regard for safety than western aviators?
For example consider this information from that linked article:
"Putin, who has no known pilot training, is no stranger to the co-pilot's seat, operating a Tu-160 supersonic heavy bomber during the MAKS air show in 2005 and flying in a Su-27 jet over Chechnya in 2000."
Compare that to the Air Canada pilot who was disciplined by Transport Canada over newspaper photos of a political leader occuypying the pilot's seat during an election campaign charter flight...
Then there's the Mayday episode about the Russian jet that lost control and crashed while the Captain's son was in the pilot's seat.
"you're not supposed to have those specifics"
Hey, I still remember monarch butterfly references... those gave it away!
Wayne Farmer: I think I blogged about that one and translated some specs on it a while back.
Aluwings: I just echoed what it said in an article, I think one of the ones I linked. It does appear that they have different operational standards, though.
Anonymous: Yeah, I know. That was a cookie for people like you. I'm glad you're still around. :-)
loads more amazing pics of the Ekranoplan here: http://englishrussia.com/index.php/2010/03/12/ekranoplan/
Trix: I bet you'd have loved to have been given a chance to pilot it! Something tells me it's slightly bigger than what you fly now....
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