Welcome on the XJ-137

Description

The XJ-137 (NATO reporting name: "Crasher") was the first jet airliner created by an Eastern Blocc country, having first flown in 1953, 2 years years before the TU-104. It was built in a competition, which aimed to create several civilian and military airliners for future use. The XJ-137 had many issues, it was rather unstable in the air, and difficult to fly at low speeds.

Operations

In total 18 of the type were built. 9 of the type was operated by Soviet airline Aeroflot, the other 9 was operated by Maszovlet (which would later become MALÉV) It was used on short routes, and on smaller grass and gravel airfields, where the placement of the engines were very beneficial.

Incidents and Accidents

On 1954, November 28, MALÉV Flight 293 had an incident upon taking off from RWY 13R of Ferihegy Airport in Budapest. The pilots overrotated the aircraft, which resulted in an aerodynamic stall after takeoff. The aircraft fell back down onto the runway, and fire quickly started to spread across the aircraft. 19 out of the 26 passengers managed to evacuate the aircraft, the 4 crew members were also still in the aircraft.

On 1956 August 18 the aircraft operating Aeroflot flight 184 suffered an explosive decompression above Kiev, Ukraine SSR. All of the 48 passengers and 4 crew members died in the accident.

On 1959 January 3rd an XJ-137 operating MALÉV flight 734 crashed in final approach into Prague due to a stall, which was a result of the poor design of the aircraft. 10 of the 60 passengers and 5 crew members passed away in the incident, plus an additional person on the ground.

Specifications

Wingspan 67.6ft (20.6m)
Length 75.3ft (22.9m)
Height 14.3ft (4.4m)
Passenger capacity: 65
Crew: 4-5

Take off speed: 154 kts
Landing speed: 125 kts

Additional Information

The XJ-137 was intended to be Type IV for the competition, which required a ~100 seat capacity. Unfortunately this capacity requirement wasn't met by the aircraft, but it was planned that a longer version with newer engines and larger vertical stabilisers would be built (which would be designated XJ-137B), but this never happened.

Controls

AG-1: Landing Lights
AG-2: Engines
AG-4: NAV lights
AG-6: Air stairs

Personal note

To be honest I'm not very proud of this aircraft, many things are missing from it that I wanted to add, but at the end I didn't. The quality isn't the best either, but it was a very fun aircraft to work on, even with the delay (personal reasons). I'll try to make some more fictional airliners in the future, the first is probably going to be a family of regional jets (similar to the CRJ family, but not exactly the same). I've also started working on the A350, other than the fuselage and the engines not too much progress has been made (again for personal reasons). However I'm pretty proud of how that one's looking at this time. I'm not going to post a teaser of it, at least before I complete most of the wings. I can't promise this plane (or an other) will be done anytime soon, as I'm having less and less time and motivation to work on these planes. This shows in this one too unfortunately... I apologise for the quality of this aircraft, but I still hope some of you will like it. Thanks for reading, enjoy your flight!

Liveries

Aeroflot by @C5GALEXY

None yet, I may create at least one of the liveries, but I can't promise. Please do not make liveries of any other airlines, if you do, I won't feature it in the description. Thank you.