Nad oblaky (1958) - ČSA - Tu-104
Video from the channel Letecká Videa about Tupolev Tu-104, linked on its Above Ten Thousand entry. Duration: 14:11. Video type: Archive footage.
What it shows
A commissioned film for the Czechoslovak airline ČSA that combines an educational explanation of how a jet aircraft works with a report on a scheduled flight between Prague and Cairo aboard a Tupolev Tu-104A, presented as the pride of Soviet industry. It opens by recalling the pioneer Jan Kašpar, who half a century earlier flew 120 km from Pardubice to Prague in an hour and a half. It then explains the principle of the jet engine: hot gases from the combustion of kerosene, a turbine that drives the compressor, and a power output, in the aircraft's two engines, equivalent to that of 30 piston engines of large airliners. The loaded aircraft weighs 75 tonnes.
When and where it was filmed
Filmed in 1958, it follows flight OK 504 from Prague airport: tower clearance with wind at 310° at 8 m/s, takeoff, in-flight service and cruise at 12,000 m and 850 km/h, one kilometre every four seconds. Among the passengers travels only Míša, a four-year-old boy on his way to join his mother in Cairo, 3,200 km and four hours from Prague.
Context
The film highlights the calm and comfort of the pressurised cabin, the emergency oxygen mask and the meal served in flight. It shows radar navigation over the Danube, Novi Sad and the Yugoslav border, and the astrocompass that corrects the heading. The flight ends over the Nile delta, the desert and Cairo, and the film closes with comparisons of flight times from Prague and the aircraft's return to the city.