Aeroflot Tupolev Tu-134

When my stepfather Bary Poletto was starting to build his airliner collection in the 1970s (now the world's largest, with over 900 models!), model kits of Eastern Bloc aircraft were very hard to come by, as were good color pictures.  He was able to find a VEB of East Germany kit of the Tupolev Tu-134 airliner--but the quality of VEB's kits left something to be desired.  The plastic was very thick and the landing gear usually had to be replaced.  Bary was able to make it work into a good-looking model, but the lack of good color pictures gave him the impression that Aeroflot's fuselages were painted light blue instead of white--hence the somewhat inaccurate scheme here.

The Tu-134, compared to contemporary Western airliners, looked somewhat primitive--the wing was not as aerodynamically clean as its Western equivalents (namely the Boeing 727 and Douglas DC-9); the large pods on the rear of the wing were for the landing gear.  The nose looked like a throwback to World War II, with a glassed-in section for the navigator.  Despite appearances, the Tu-134 was the first truly reliable Soviet jet airliner, and nearly 900 were built.  They remained in service into the 21st Century, but age and their very noisy engines (a common problem with Soviet-era airliners) quickly reduced their numbers after 2000.  Very few remain in service today, though some are preserved in museums.

This particular Tu-134, CCCP-65610, only remained in revenue service for six years; it was retired in 1972 to become a trainer for Aeroflot and Soviet Air Force pilots.  Once it hit the end of its service life in 1984, it was taken out of flying service and acted as a ground trainer until 1997.  After that, it sat derelict at Ulyanovsk until it was finally scrapped sometime in 2005.