El L-39 "Albatros" - Simplicidad Checoslovaca en los Cielos, desde la Guerra Fría hasta hoy.

Video from the channel Historias de Vuelos about Aero L-39 Albatros, linked on its Above Ten Thousand entry. Duration: 19:49. Language: Spanish. Video type: Documentary.

A general overview of the Aero L-39 Albatros, the jet trainer designed and built by Aero Vodochody in Czechoslovakia: its origins, its variants, its combat use, its popularity among civilian owners, and its successor, the L-39NG.

Conceived in the 1960s to replace the L-29 Delfín, the L-39 first flew on 4 November 1968 and was the world's first trainer with a turbofan engine. Series production began in 1971, most Warsaw Pact countries adopted it in 1972, and it entered service with the Czechoslovak air force in 1974. It gave rise to the L-59 Super Albatros, the L-139 prototype with a Garrett TFE731 engine, and the L-159 ALCA, in production since 1997. The video covers its combat use in Abkhazia, Nagorno-Karabakh, Chechnya, Afghanistan, the Chad–Libya conflict, Syria, and Ukraine.

More than 2,800 units served in over 30 air forces. It can carry up to 2,400 pounds of ordnance on four underwing hardpoints and a ventral pod with a GSh-23 cannon. In September 2012 there were 255 registered with the FAA, and in 2002 the Reno races created a category exclusively for the type. The L-39NG was announced at Farnborough in July 2014: a Williams FJ44-4M engine, a wet wing without tip tanks, a flying demonstrator on 14 September 2015, and the first prototype on 22 December 2018.