Aero L-39 Albatros

Video from the channel Mundo de Aviación about Aero L-39 Albatros, linked on its Above Ten Thousand entry. Duration: 8:48. Language: Spanish. Video type: Documentary.

The video presents the Aero L-39 Albatros, the world's most widely used jet trainer, flown by more than 30 countries for basic and advanced training as well as light attack missions. According to the narration, it was the first trainer fitted with a turbofan instead of a turbojet.

In 1964 Aero Vodochody began designing a replacement for the L-29 Delfín for the Warsaw Pact. The second of three prototypes flew on 4 November 1968, and the production version was the L-39C. By the late 1980s around 200 were being sold per year, and in 1993 it accounted for 80% of the value of Czech military exports. Variants followed, such as the 1975 L-39ZO, with four hardpoints and a reinforced wing, and the 1977 L-39ZA, with a 23 mm cannon. In the 1990s versions with Western avionics were offered together with Elbit Systems, with Thailand as the first customer; production ended in 1996. Then came the L-159 ALCA, with Rockwell Collins as a partner, and the L-39NG, announced at Farnborough in 2014 with a Williams FJ44 engine, no wingtip tanks and new avionics; its production began in 2023.

Maximum takeoff weight of 4,700 kg, top speed of 750 km/h and an Ivchenko AI-25TL turbofan. The two crew members sit on VS-1 ejection seats, with the instructor's seat raised slightly. It saw combat in Abkhazia, Afghanistan, Nagorno-Karabakh, Iraq and Chad. In 2012 there were 255 registered with the FAA, and more than 2,900 L-39s, 72 L-159s and more than 30 L-39NGs were built.