RA-96010 —

Nice pic, interesting landing gear configuration.

Ilyushin Il-96
Airbus A340-600 has a similar landing gear design.

Mario


A beautiful airliner and spectacular sky

5 Plus Stars

I flew A340 overseas about 25 years ago (when the airplane was new) and they had only a 2 wheel center gear. The outboard gear had a lot of angle on it just before touchdown and the center gear was very solid so the airplane wouldn't make a smooth landing unless you had the nose going down just as the mains touched down (a lot like the 727 was to get a smooth landing). The A340-300 was the greatest underpowered airplane I ever flew, it could take 45 minutes to get to it's cruise altitude of FL330 or 350. Which was a problem in Europe where they want you to get there right now and wanted a 1000fpm climb rate and we could only give them 300fpm for the last maybe 3-5000ft. You couldn't get over 1000fpm climb until you were above 280 kts and that was at 10,000ft unless you could get ATC to let you speed up from the 250kt limit below 10,000ft. You don't see many A340's anymore probable because a A330-200/300 can fly about the same mission on less fuel and could climb right up to it's cruise altitude (ETOPS).