Business Aviation

Sale of Ilyushin Il-76. The aircraft was first conceived by Ilyushin in 1967 to meet a requirement for a freighter able to carry a payload of 40 tons (88,000 lb) over a range of 5,000 km (2,700 nmi; 3,100 mi) in less than six hours, able to operate from short and unprepared airstrips, and capable of coping with the worst weather conditions likely to be experienced in Siberia and the Soviet Union's Arctic regions. It was intended as a replacement for the An-12. Another intended version was a double-decked 250-passenger airliner but that project was cancelled. The Il-76 first flew on March 1971. Il-76TD, one of the first variants, at Zurich Airport.  Production of Il-76s was allocated to the Tashkent Aviation Production Association in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, then a republic of the Soviet Union. Some 860 of the basic transport variants were manufactured. In the 1990s, modernized variants were developed (MF, TF), with a cargo compartment 20 m long by 3.4 m wide by 3.4 m tall; these larger variants were not produced in significant quantity due to the financial difficulties being experienced by the Russian Air Force, who was the primary operator of the type. The prototype of the Il-76MF, conducted its first flight on 1 August 1995. All production operations ceased during the late 1990s.