File:The Soviet Airliner Yakovlev Yak-40. Советский авиалайнер Як-40.jpg

English: Central Air Force Museum. Monino. Moscow.

The Yakovlev Yak-40 (NATO reporting name: Codling) is a small, three-engined airliner that is often called the first regional jet transport aircraft. It was introduced in September 1968 with Aeroflot.

DevelopmentBy the early 1960s, the Soviet state airline Aeroflot's international and internal trunk routes were been flown by jet or turboprop powered airliners but their local services, many of which operated from grass airfields, were operated by obsolete piston engined aircraft such as the Ilyushin Il-12, Il-14 and Lisunov Li-2. Aeroflot wanted to replace these elderly airliners with a turbine-powered aircraft, with the Yakovlev design bureau being assigned to design the new airliner. High speed was not required, but it would have to operate safely and reliably out of poorly equipped airports with short (less than 700 m, (2,300 ft)) unpaved runways in poor weather.

Yakovlev studied both turboprop and jet-powered designs to meet the requirement, including Vertical Take-Off and Landing (VTOL) designs with lift jets in the fuselage or in wing-mounted pods, but eventually they settled on a straight-winged tri-jet carrying 20 to 25 passengers. Engines were to be the new AI-25 turbofan being developed by Ivchenko at Zaporozhye in Ukraine. DesignThe Yak-40 is a low-winged cantilever monoplane with unswept wings, a large T-tail and a retractable tricycle landing gear. The passenger cabin is ahead of the wing, with the short rear fuselage carrying the three turbofan engines, with two engines mounted on short pylons on the side of the fuselage and a third engine buried in the rear fuselage, with air fed from a dorsal air-intake ahead of the fin by a "S-duct", as was an auxiliary power unit which was fitted to allow engine start-up without ground support on primitive airfields. The three AI-25 engines were two-shaft engines rated at 14.7 kN (3,300 lbf). The engines had no jetpipes, and initially no thrust reversers.

The pressurized fuselage has a diameter of 2.4 metres (94 in). Pilot and co-pilot sit side-by-side in the aircraft's flight deck, while the passenger cabin has a standard layout seating 24 passengers three-abreast, although 32 passengers can be carried by switching to four-abreast seating. Passengers entered and left the aircraft via a set of ventral airstairs in the rear fuselage.

The wing is fitted with large trailing-edge slotted flaps, but had no other high-lift devices, relying on the aircraft's low wing loading to give the required short-field take-off and landing performance. The port and starbord wings join at the aircraft centreline, with the main spar running from wingtip to wingtip, with the wings housing integral fuel tanks with a capacity of 3,800 litres (1,000 US gal; 840 imp gal). The aircraft has a large fin, which is swept back at an angle of 50 degrees to move the tailplane rearwards to compensate for the short rear fuselage. The horizontal tailplane itself is unswept.

The first of five prototypes made its maiden flight on 21 October 1966,[7] with production being launched at the Saratov Aviation Plant in 1967 and Soviet type certification granted in 1968. The type carried out its first passenger service for Aeroflot on 30 September 1968.

By the time production ended in 1981 the factory at Saratov had produced 1,011 aircraft. By 1993 Yak-40s operated by Aeroflot had carried 354 million passengers. As well as being the backbone of Aeroflot's local operations, flying to 276 domestic destinations in 1980, the Yak-40 was also an export success. A total of 130 were exported to Afghanistan, Angola, Bulgaria, Cambodia, Cuba, Czechoslovakia, Equatorial Guinea, Ethiopia, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Laos, Madagascar, Poland, Syria, Vietnam, Yugoslavia and Zambia.

General characteristics Crew: 2 Capacity: 32 passengers Length: 20.36 m (66 ft 9½ in) Wingspan: 25.00 m (82 ft 0¼ in) Height: 6.50 m (21 ft 4 in) Wing area: 70.00 m² (753.5 ft²) Empty weight: 9,400 kg (20,725 lb) Max. takeoff weight: 15,500 kg (34,170 lb) Powerplant: 3 × Ivchenko AI-25 turbofans, 14.7 kN (3,300 lbf) each Performance

Maximum speed: 550 km/h (297 knots, 342 mph) at 7,000 m (23,000 ft) (max cruise) Range: 1,800 km (971 nmi, 1,118 mi) Service ceiling: 8,000 m[36] (26,240 ft)

Rate of climb: 8.0 m/s (1,575 ft/min)