14 Facts About Ilyushin Il-62

Ilyushin Il-62 is a Soviet long-range narrow-body jetliner conceived in 1960 by Ilyushin.

Ilyushin Il-62 entered Aeroflot civilian service on 15 September 1967 with an inaugural passenger flight from Moscow to Montreal, and remained the standard long-range airliner for the Soviet Union for several decades.

The Ilyushin Il-62's successors include the wide-bodied Il-86 and Il-96, both of which were made in much smaller numbers and neither of which was widely exported.

Ilyushin Il-62 OKB presented a proposal for a four-engined long-range jet airliner in February 1960, receiving the go-ahead from the Soviet Council of Ministers on 18 June 1960, with the Kuznetsov Design Bureau being instructed at the same time to develop the NK-8 turbofan to power the new airliner.

Ilyushin Il-62 replaced the fast turboprop Tu-114 on long range routes.

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Ilyushin Il-62 has tricycle landing gear with an additional lightweight gear strut at the rear of the fuselage which extends when the aircraft reaches its parking position.

Ilyushin Il-62 is the largest airliner ever built with all-manual flight controls, using steel cables, rods, pulleys, aerodynamic and weight balances, and trim tabs.

The Ilyushin Il-62 has a forward-mounted tank serving as a water ballast.

Ilyushin Il-62 is a conventional all-metal low-wing monoplane of riveted sectional semi-monocoque construction to fail-safe design principles.

Unlike the VC10, the Ilyushin Il-62 uses conservative technology, such as mechanical control surface linkages, and is an entirely civilian machine, whereas the VC10 was designed to serve as both a civilian airliner and military airlifter and freighter.

The Ilyushin Il-62 found more buyers and was built in much larger numbers than the VC10, and as of November 2018 many examples are still in service.

Ilyushin Il-62 was said to be well regarded by pilots and passengers alike, especially for its strong directional stability in high turbulence, smooth cruising ability and very quiet interior in cruise mode due partly to engine placement.

One of the drawbacks of the original Ilyushin Il-62 design was the lack of a cargo bay roller transfer system, which necessitated manual loading of pre-packaged baggage and cargo thus making preparation of the aircraft rather slow.

The largest non-state operator of the Ilyushin Il-62 was Russian-based Domodedovo Airlines which acquired 45 planes from Aeroflot that were used for domestic services including continuous operations on the world's longest internal route, Moscow to Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, a distance of 6,800 kilometres.