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Aeroflot has some impressive new models for the job. It has started to fly Tupolev's new four-jet, 500-10-600 m.p.h. TU-110s the 2,700 miles from Moscow to Irkutsk, may put the plane on longer runs to replace the TU-IO4. For ranges up to 3,000 miles, Aeroflot has shown off prototypes of two 400-m.p.h., four-engined turboprops — Ilyushin's 100-passenger IL-18 Moskva and Antonov's 126-passenger Ukraina—that resemble Lockheed's Electra, now being test-flown. Aeroflot's highest hopes for capturing a large chunk of the foreign market rest on Tupolev's four-engined turboprop, swept-wing TU-114, a double-decked, pressurized behemoth, twice the size of a Super Constellation. The Reds claim that it is the world's fastest propeller airliner (more than 500 m.p.h.), can carry no passengers nonstop from Moscow to New York in ten hours, crowd in 220 passengers for shorter trips. Aeroflot has displayed a prototype, plans to have TU-114s in commercial operation within a year.
Comfort & Confusion. Aeroflot developed into this huge, showy line from a humble beginning. The Soviet state put it together in 1923 from remnants of the revolution's Red air force. In the 1930s Stalin purged some of Aeroflot's best brains, but in World War II he outfitted Aeroflot with hundreds of U.S. lend-lease Dakotas (DC-3s), started to expand it fast to open up underdeveloped Russian areas that had no roads or rail lines.
Today Aeroflot is actually Soviet Russia's civil air ministry. Besides hauling passengers and freight, it carries out a massive program of crop dusting and sowing; it runs meteorological and oil-pipeline surveys, organizes flying clubs, maintains all nonmilitary airports and directs two colleges which train pilots and ground technicians. It is difficult to tell where the Red air force leaves off and Aeroflot begins. Bossing it is onetime Air Force Commander in Chief (1950-57) Chief Air Marshal Pavel Zhigarev, 60. veteran pilot and bomber expert who got the airline job a year ago.
Zhigarev rules a rigidly controlled bureaucracy. So tight is his grip that a station manager in Vladivostok sometimes has to seek approval from Moscow—4,000 miles away—to effect changes. At the same time, Aeroflot is so disorganized that its 27 territorial boards print separate timetables, often in the local language, to the consternation of passengers who must change planes on a long trip.
By Western standards, Zhigarev's bureaucracy ignores the basic rules for running an airline economically. While Western lines use their planes up to twelve hours a day for money-saving "maximum utilization," Aeroflot idles dozens of planes on the ground for each one in the air. Aeroflot does not have enough good ground bases, maintenance depots or technicians to handle its huge fleet. The Russians built Aeroflot's new planes so they can use the country's rough airports, rather than improving the airports. Thus the jets sacrifice payload and range for ruggedness.
On the other hand, the line's big-city strips are long and smooth, and the terminals abound with electronic landing equipment, radar and comforts for passengers. Moscow's Victorian-style Vnukovo Airport compares with some of the best in the West, houses a transient hotel and a nursery with toys and cots for the tots.