Airplane of the Day - Ilyushin Il-76

Ilyushin Il-76 navigator's view out the glass nose

Ilyushin Il-76

The Ilyushin Il-76 is a Russian air freighter. It is comparable in size to the Lockheed C-141 Starlifter and the Boeing C-17 Globemaster. It is slightly larger than the Starlifter and slightly smaller than the Globemaster. 80 of these aircraft have crashed. This high number might be due to the 46 years it has been flying, the large number produced (960), and the number sent to countries that are not known for their technical proficiency.

The IL-76 has appeared here before a couple of times.

Via daily timewaster

Ilyushin Il-76

Ilyushin Il-76 at Eindhoven

Gee, that looks familiar. Eindhoven is in the Netherlands. The IL-76 has been here before.

Ilyushin Il-96

Ilyushin Il-96

This is one of those things that creep up on you unawares. My first glance at the picture tells me I'm looking at another modern airliner made by Boeing or Airbus, but then I notice the Cyrillic writing and I check the caption and find that it is not what I expected, but rather it is a Russian airliner. I knew Russia made airliners, but somehow that knowledge was confined to aircraft made 60 years ago. There is also the IL-76, but it is a dual purpose airplane made to carry people or soldiers.

Fun on Ice with the Giant Russian IL-76 Air Freighter

We are operating in Antarctica on an ice runway. Empty, this plane weighs about 100 tons. Loaded, it weighs about 200 tons. It seems to have 20 wheels, which means each wheel is carrying between 5 and 10 tons, which is like 5 times as much as each wheel on a large 18 wheeled semi-truck. This clip only shows 3 minutes out of the middle of the video. Click on the YouTube logo to watch the whole thing (16 minutes).

Pic of the Day

IL-76 somewhere in the North.

Pic of the Day

Ukrainian Air Force IL-76 at Refuelling Station Nord during Operation Northern Falcon 2014 in Greenland.

When I first saw this picture, I wondered what such a big airplane was doing on the beach because that big, shiny expanse behind it looked like water, and then I realized that's it all ice, and we aren't on the beach. Shoot, there is no beach in Nord. Because of the ice you can only get a ship there once every five or ten years. 

Malaysia Airlines Flight 370

Two Ilyushin Il-76 aircraft from Chinese Air Force on the tarmac in Perth, Australia, on March 22, 2014. (Xinhua/Lui Siu Wai)

Chinese aircrews flying Russian built aircraft out of Australia to search for an American built Boeing 777 airliner being flown by a Malaysian crew.

Making Jet Engines is Hard

IL-76 Flying Test Bed (FTB) in Russia

India has been trying to make their own jet engines for the Tejas jet fighter since 1986. In 1977 they did successfully design and build a jet engine. The GTRE GTX-35V Kaveri project isn't going so well. They have only gotten it to run for 73 hours on the flying test bed.

Fun with Tires

Blowing Up an Airplane Tire | I Didn't Know That

The video of the IL-76 skating on ice got me to thinking about how hard the ice must be and how big the tires were, which led me to this video from National Geographic. They use water now.

The tires on big aircraft are big (about four feet in diameter), but not a lot bigger than they used to be. We had a big, tractor towed chemical sprayer on the orchard and it rolled around on a couple of big aircraft tires. I imagine that the materials used to make these tires have gotten a lot better.

Orchard Sprayer

Update April 2021 replaced missing photo and dead link.