Tupolev Tu-144

The Tupolev Tu-144 is a retired jet airliner and commercial supersonic transport aircraft. It was the world's first commercial SST, the second being the Anglo-French Concorde. The design was a product of the Tupolev design bureau, headed by Alexei Tupolev, of the Soviet Union and manufactured by the Voronezh Aircraft Production Association in Voronezh, Russia. It conducted 102 commercial flights, of which only 55 carried passengers, at an average service altitude of 16,000 metres and cruised at a speed of around 2,000 kilometres per hour.The prototype's first flight was made on 31 December 1968, near Moscow from Zhukovsky Airport, two…