UNREAL! Flying CUBANA's Extremely RARE Soviet TUPOLEV TU-204

Video from the channel Josh Cahill about Tupolev, linked on its Above Ten Thousand entry. Duration: 33:17. Language: English. Video type: Onboard.

Travel diary in business class aboard Cubana flight CU 313 between Caracas and Havana, operated with a Tupolev Tu-204. The author follows the whole journey: check-in at Caracas airport, with a handwritten boarding pass; the wait in an almost traffic-free terminal; the aircraft's arrival in the rain; boarding; the flight and the landing. He then describes entering Cuba and a brief tour of Havana.

Departure is delayed: two passengers are awaited, part of the hold is unloaded, a door is reopened due to a fault and, after being towed, the aircraft sits for about twenty minutes with engines running before taxiing. The takeoff is shown unedited so the PS-90 engines can be heard. In business class, the seats recline a long way and have an armrest control with a headphone jack, but there are no individual screens. The 212-seat economy class is also shown. The service is a cold plate with olives, cheese and fruit, Cuban cola and black coffee, and the lavatory with its distinctive tap is shown. On approach to Havana, the crew invites the author into the cockpit, where he films the landing standing up, with the altitude callouts. On arrival, the electronic visa does not work and he has to pay a 70-dollar visa on arrival.

The author compares the Tu-204 with the Airbus A321 and the Boeing 757 in size and capacity, and says that from the seat it feels like any Western aircraft. He explains that sanctions stop Cubana from buying Boeing or Airbus aircraft, so its fleet is Russian: this Tu-204, delivered seventeen years ago, and the Ilyushin Il-96, intercut with footage of one landing in Madrid. He also mentions that the North Korean airline Air Koryo uses the type and that Red Wings has brought the Tu-214 back into service. In Havana he visits the Hotel Nacional, where IATA was founded, Revolution Square with the Che Guevara mural, and a former Soviet nuclear warhead depot from the missile crisis.