Tupolev Tu-134 Tu-134

The first Tu-134 series is the glazed-nose version, a feature inherited directly from Soviet practice of placing the navigator in the nose station. The cabin initially seated up to 64 passengers, later increased to 72. The type first flew on 29 July 1963 and entered service on 9 September 1967.

The Tu-134 adopted the layout the French Sud Aviation Caravelle had established: engines on pylons at the rear fuselage. The advantages were a clean wing, with no nacelles or pylons disrupting the airflow, and less cabin noise; the price was a difficult centre of gravity, since the heavy engines sat well aft of the wing's centre of lift, and a tailplane that had to be moved up onto the fin, which then had to be stronger and heavier, compounding the tail-heavy arrangement.

In September 1967 the Tu-134 made its first scheduled flight, from Moscow to Adler. It was the first Soviet airliner to receive international certification from the ICAO, which opened international routes to it: Aeroflot used most of its fleet on them. In 1968 the first export customers arrived — Interflug of East Germany, LOT Polish Airlines and Malév of Hungary — and in 1969 the aircraft was displayed at the Paris Air Show.

In its early years the Tu-134 earned a reputation for reliability and efficiency compared with earlier Soviet designs. The tougher ICAO noise standards of 2002 banned it from most western European airports. In early 2006, 245 aircraft were still in operation, 162 of them in Russia. After a fatal accident in March 2007 Aeroflot announced it would retire its fleet, and the last one left service on 1 January 2008; the type's final passenger flight in Russia took place on 22 May 2019.