Soviet Airliners

When the Soviet Union fell in December 1991, there were close to 3,500 assorted Soviet-built airliners that could be deemed operational - more than there had ever been before. While many had been built in Russia, vast numbers had also emerged from the aircraft factories in Ukraine. Thirty years later, they have almost all disappeared.

This highly illustrated publication, packed with stories, anecdotes, and detail, follows the fortunes of this great fleet over the last three decades: the fragmentation of Aeroflot into a myriad of new operators in the 1990s, the countless bankruptcies and consolidation of so many airlines that followed, and the slow, inevitable disappearance of these iconic, charismatic aircraft from our skies.

This is an updated, reworked and much-expanded reissue of 'Soviet-era Airliners', originally published as a book by Key Publishing in 2021.