Ask the pilot

The destruction of two Russian jetliners is proof that bombs, not skyjackings, are the current terrorist threat to watch for. But just what is a Tupolev jet, anyway?

By Patrick Smith

Sep 3, 2004 | Last Tuesday evening, two Russian jetliners crashed within minutes of each other after takeoff from Moscow's Domodedovo airport. First to go down, near the city of Tula, was a Tupolev Tu-134 in the colors of Volga-Aviaexpress. Moments later, a Sibir Airlines Tupolev Tu-154 fell near Rostov-on-Don, scattering wreckage over a 25-mile circle. Eighty-nine people were killed in the accidents.

Though "accident" is likely the wrong word. The last time two or more airliners crashed on the same day was, need you be reminded, Sept. 11, 2001. Now as then, the downings appear to be the work of terrorism. "Now Russia has its own 11th September," proclaimed the headline of the Nezavisimaya Gazeta newspaper.

Well, sort of. At this point in the investigation there's no evidence of attempted skyjacking aboard either Tupolev, early reports to the contrary discounted. Suicide bombers, possibly a duo of Chechen women, are instead the alleged culprits. The disaster struck five days prior to elections in the breakaway republic of Chechnya, where Islamic rebels have been battling Russian forces for the past five years. It has become something of a tradition for widows of Chechen fighters to carry out suicide attacks.

As I have predicted a number of times, most recently during my month-long obsession with Annie Jacobsen and the finer points of air terror, bombings, not Sept. 11 sequels, are the likeliest terrorist threat to air travel today. Just this morning a story from Reuters, "Gap Seen in Airport Screening," discusses how hand baggage at U.S. airports is not being checked for explosives. Corkscrews yes; bombs no. But don't get me started, because the last thing I feel like doing right now is analyzing this latest tragedy.

So, let's do something more fun instead. Doubtless you were startled by the news, no? Aghast at the idea of two airplanes crashing simultaneously? How could it happen? Who did it? Why? But there's probably something else you were wondering too:

What the hell is a Tupolev?

Unbeknownst to many, the Soviet Union manufactured tens of thousands of civil airliners, from piston biplanes to supersonic jets. The design bureaus of Tupolev, Ilyushin and Antonov (that's Mssrs. Andrei, Sergei, and Oleg) churned out planes for the better part of seven decades, rivaling the factory totals of their free-world counterparts. New models have also been unveiled in recent years from ex-Iron Curtain republics.

My friends and I became fascinated with Soviet planes in junior high school, marking up our books and desks with drawings of IL-62s or Tu-144s. It was the late 1970s, and there was something rebellious, maybe, in sketching out the products of our sworn communist enemies. We were like that: geeky, but contrarian troublemakers no less.

You could say the same for the planes themselves. Soviet designs were certainly peculiar. In the West, an airliner's wings are canted upward from the root -- a contributor to aerodynamic stability called "dihedral." The communists angled their wings downward -- same purpose, opposite aesthetic -- in a bend called "anhedral." They were oversized and underpowered, with lines that seemed to zig where they should have zagged; curved where they should have gone straight; punctuated with all manner of weirdly rakish fairings, nacelles, and hatches. In a way their jets were pure statements of proletarian functionalism: not very advanced; easy to break and easy to fix. In another way they were ugly, scary, menacing machines of Cold War intimidation.

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