Today we invite you to board the Moscow-Mirny bound Antonov An-2. This flight will be special because you won’t be just a regular passenger, you’ll have an opportunity to stay in the cockpit and watch everything going on there!
We are at Chkalovsky military airport that is located in the Moscow Region. It doesn’t look like regular airports with a duty-free and nice interior design. Everything’s simple and concise here.
Ticket offices.
‘An-72′.
The plane features four windows, two first-class and two regular ones.
The An-72 is also nicknamed Cheburashka because of the large engine intake ducts, which resemble the oversized ears of the popular Soviet animated creature with the same name.
The plane’s maximum weight is 32 tons.
The first class compartment.
The luggage compartment.
The aft section.
This orange ball is a black box.
‘Boiler’, ‘Electric stove’.
The aircraft commander.
On-board snack.
‘Emergency exit tape’.
An i-Phone with a navigation system.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6c3YoDspTQs&feature=player_embedded#![/youtube]
The Antonov An-72 take off.
Location: The Moscow Region
via chistoprudov
I-Phone on the dashboard is funny.
I have read that an Australian man invented the black box idea (orange ball) but no Australian airline was interested neither was our government.
Correct, apathetic aussie’s
Russia has made some very rugged and dependable aircraft. It is interesting seeing the navigator using a paper map and a sliderule to do his calculations. In western aircraft the navigation is done by computers.
Is a plane where having active noise cancellation headsets would be much welcomed. Otherwise pretty neat.
Interesting and unique design, but I wonder how noisy it is, with the engines located where they are?
I bet the engines are noisy to the people in the cabin. The wing mounted engine allows the engine exhaust to exit over that portion of the wing to provide extra lift(coanda effect).
The AN 72 is a STOL(short take off and landing) design so it could be used on short and unimproved remote airfields. The undercarriage is of substantial construction so it can land on very rough air fields.
Antonov built about 200 of this type of aircraft. They appear to be very well constructed and have been reliable.
It looks that it has a crew of 3 people, the third one is usually the navigator. It’s very strange as even the most heavy modern airlines have a crew of only 2,the navigator being replaced by advanced flight computers and GPS. If there wasn’t this Iphone, I’d say these photos are from late 80′s.
In cockpit they also have a mini-stereo (to listen to the weather forecast?), that’s really unusual!
I am pretty sure that this airplane has no certification to land on EU and USA airports because of its obsolete technology of avionics.
If the plane got I-phone, then can be displaced half of avionics
. But without any joke, I admire the guys who knew to do the calculations with sliderule in our digitized era.
I have flown on this aircraft to the ice base Barneo. There is no more engine noise than any other aircraft of that era that I have been on. The passenger cabin of the plane I was on was definitely not modern though, even less so than in these pictures. It was also one of the smoothest flights I have ever been on. Maybe there is no turbulence in the North Pole?
Engines mounted up there will suck in less snow and ice maybe? = good safety feature:)
The Russian engines have a distinctly different sound from American jets….. interesting…..
Excellent photos of one of my favorite aircraft! Really first class job