The Ilyushin Il-86 (; NATO reporting name: Camber) is a retired short- to medium-range wide-body jet airliner that served as the USSR's first wide-bodied aircraft. Designed and tested by the Ilyushin design bureau in the 1970s, it was certified by the Soviet aircraft industry, manufactured and marketed by the USSR.
Developed during the rule of Leonid Brezhnev, the Il-86 was marked by the economic and technological stagnation of the era: it used engines more typical of the late 1960s, spent a decade in development, and failed to enter service in time for the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow, as was originally intended. The type was used by Aeroflot and successor post-Soviet airlines; only three of the total 106 constructed were exported.
At the beginning of 2012, only four Il-86s remained in service, all with the Russian Air Force. By the end of 2020 the number in active service was reduced to three.
Development Background In the mid-1960s, the United States and Western Europe planned airliners seating twice the then-maximum of some 200 passengers. They were known as airbuses at the time. The Soviet leadership wanted to match them with an aerobus (). Alongside the propaganda motive, the USSR genuinely needed an aerobus. Aeroflot expected over 100 million passengers a yearАндреев И., "Земные связи авиации", "Техника – молодёжи", No. 12, 1977, стр. 40–41 [Andreyev, I., "Aviation's Ground Connections," Tyekhnika – Molodyozhi, No 12 1977, pp 40–41] within a decade (the 100th million annual passenger was indeed carried on 29 December 1976.)Ilyushin Widebodies Airliner World January 2019 pages 70-77
First to respond was OKB-153, the bureau led by Oleg Antonov. It proposed a 724-seat version of the An-22 airlifter.See for instance Stroud J, Soviet Transport Aircraft since 1945, Putnam, London, 1968 The project was promoted until 1969, ultimately with a 605-passenger interior (383 on the upper deck and 223 on the lower).Bakshmi, K., "Генералният конструктор" [The Constructor General; in Bulgarian], Kosmos No 9 1968, pp 1–3 It did not go ahead due to fears that it would be old-fashioned and because the Kiev-based bureau was close to the deposed Nikita Khrushchev.Krasnoshchekov A., V. Zayarin, "Античный герой XX века" ["An Ancient Hero Amid the 20th Century"], Aviatsiya i Vremya No 3 1999Zasypkin Yu. V., K. Yu. Kosminkov, eds, История конструкций самолетов в СССР 1951–1965 гг. ["A History of Aircraft Design in the USSR between 1951 and 1965"], Mashinostroyenie, Moscow, 2002
Concept Many airports had terminals too small for "aerobuses"."747: Ground Handling Problems", p 126, Flight International, 23 January 1969 In the West, the solution to this involved constructing greater airport capacity.Typical examples were the Heathrow Airport 747 Pier ("Heathrow's 747 Jetties," p 478, Flight International, 26 September 1968), Pan Am's John F Kennedy Airport terminal extension ("Pan American Prepares for the 747," pp 290–292, Flight International, 21 August 1969) and the new terminal at Amsterdam Airport Schiphol in Amsterdam ("Schiphol's New Terminal", p. 883, Flight International 1 June 1967) By contrast, Soviet aviation research institutes addressed ways of increasing passenger throughput without the need for additional airport capacity.
Many Soviet airports also had surfaces too weak for "aerobuses". The Soviet solution again favoured adapting aircraft to existing conditions, rather than reconstructing airports. The aerobus thus had to match the ground loadings of existing airliners. This called for complex multi-wheel landing gear.Vul'fov A, "Широкофюзеляжные "ИЛы" ["The Broad-Fuselage ILs"], Aviatsiya i Kosmonavtika No 1 2001
The Soviet solution to the airport capacity issue involved passengers loading and unloading their own luggage into and from the aircraft. This was eventually called "the luggage at hand system" (; transliterated: "sistyema bagazh s soboy").This was later renamed the "система «багаж с собой» плюс контейнеры" or "the 'luggage at hand' plus containers system", also rendered into English as "the 'luggage with oneself' plus containers system". Soviet aviation journalist Kim Bakshmi described it (at its ultimate) thus: "One arrives five minutes prior to departure, buys oneself a ticket on board the aircraft, hangs one's coat next to the seat and places one's bag or suitcase nearby."Baksmi, op. cit, p. 3
Taking suitcases into the cabin, as in trains, was studied, but necessitated a 3 m fuselage extension with a 350-seat capacity. To avoid this, passengers were to deposit their luggage in underfloor compartments as they entered the airliner.
Ideas similar to the "luggage at hand system" were briefly addressed in the West. Airbus studied such an arrangement in the mid-1970s.Flight International 18 June 25, 1977, p 1802 Lockheed implemented it into the L-1011 TriStar in 1973 at the request of Pacific Southwest Airlines (who used the baggage compartment as an entertainment lounge) and possibly also to suit potential Soviet buyers (see below).See particularly "Transatlantic TriStar-2", Flight International April 9, 1977, – 994
In October 1967, the Soviet government approved a Ministry of Civil Aviation (Aeroflot) specification for an aerobus. This called for 350 seats and a range of with a 40-tonne payload or with seats taken but no freight. The airliner had to operate from smaller airports (classified as Klass "B" and "V" [Russian: класс "Б", "В"] or "Class B/C" by the Soviets) runways.Talikov N, "В небе "Ильюшин" ["Ilyushin in the Sky"], ADK Studiya, 1997
In the second half of the 1960s, OKB-240 (as the Ilyushin bureau was formally known) was restoring positions lost (with Yakovlev, in favour of Tupolev and Antonov) during the Khrushchev eraSee particularly Yakovlev A. S., "Цель жизни" ["My Life's Aim"], Politizdat, Moscow, 1973 and also Talikov, ibid; at and was well placed to secure design of the aerobus. When the Soviet cabinet's defence industry committee promoted the Aeroflot specification on September 8, 1969, to a preliminary project, (Russian: аванпроект; transliterated: avanproyekt),Gordon Y., D. Komissarov, S. Komissarov, OKB Ilyushin: a History of the Design Bureau and its Aircraft, Midland/Ian Allan Publishing, Hinckley, 2004 it entrusted it to Ilyushin. The bureau received specific operational requirements for the aerobus on February 22, 1970.
In developing the concept which had been agreed, Ilyushin faced four challenges: configuration (layout or "shape"), powerplant, automation (avionics) and manufacturing capacity.
Conceptual development Ilyushin began work on the aerobus in late 1969, initially by assessing the development potential of existing aircraft. An enlarged Il-62 (the Il-62-250) would have had a 30-tonne payload, 259 seats and a 6.8 metre/22 ft longer fuselage: a virtual analogue of the Douglas DC-8 "Super Sixty" series. Other proposed Il-62 modifications involved double-deck and "two fuselages side-by-side" developments. There was also a project to "civilianise" the Il-76.
From March 1970Новожилов, Г. В., "Широкофюзеляжный многоместный", "Крылья Родины" No.8 1981, стр. 24–25 [Novozhilov G. V., "The multi-seat widebody", Krylya Rodiny No 8, 1981 pp 24–25; in Russian] the bureau developed all-new designs under the Il-86 designation. Instead of the "appropriate technology" approach of the Il-62, these designs were to have powered controls, complex high-lift devices and advanced automation which would reduce the number of flightdeck crew.Novozhilov G. V., Lyeshchiner D. V., Sheynin V. M. et al., Самолеты ОКБ имени С. В. Ильюшина ["Aircraft of the S V Ilyushin Experimental and Design Bureau"], Mashinostroyenie, Moscow, 1985
An early avanproyekt was shown to the Soviet leadership at an exhibition of civil aviation innovations at Vnukovo-2 Airport near Moscow on May 17, 1971.See Yakovlev A., ibid.Jane's All the World's Aircraft 1973–74Pravda, May 18, 1971 A scale model with the designation of "Il-86" showed the "self-loading" concept with integral boarding stairs, below-deck luggage stores, and below-deck midships galley. It had a twin-aisle interior with nine-abreast seating in a "3–3–3" layout. Ilyushin considered it politic to make the interior wider than any planned airliner except the Boeing 747.Gunston B., Aircraft of the Soviet Union, Osprey, London, 1984 The 6.07 m (19.9 ft) fuselage diameter was partly dictated by the need to provide standing room in the underfloor luggage compartments. The Il-86 had the second-widest fuselage of any airliner until the Boeing 777.
On this basis, on 9 March 1972,Васильев Н., "Широкофюзеляжный "Ил", "Крылья Родины", No.3 1998, стр. 3–4 [Vasilyev, N., "The Widebody Il", Krilya Rodiny No 3 1998, pp 3–4; in Russian] the bureau was asked to proceed with detailed design. The difference between the 1971 model and the eventual Il-86 was in configuration: the model had looked like an Il-62. At that time, the Central Aero and Hydrodynamics Institute (TsAGI) favoured the clean-winged, rear-engined, T-tailed configuration for airliners. The BAC Three-Eleven"BAC's Big Twinjet," Flight International November 14, 1968, pp 777–780 and BAC/CASA/MBB Europlane"Europlane details revealed," Flight International May 24, 1973 pp 765–766 projects had similar configurations.
The configuration of heavy jet aircraft was a politically sensitive issue in the USSR. Aircraft designer Leonid SelyakovСеляков, Л. Л., Тернистый путь в никуда: записки авиаконструктора [Selyakov, L. L., "A Thorny Road to Nowhere: an Aircraft Designer's Notes"], private edition, Moscow, 1995 states this of the underwing-engine US-pioneered layout which gradually became standard for jet airliners: "The configuration of the В-47, taken on strength by the US Air Force ... brought forth a veritable storm of critical opinions from [Soviet] aviation scientists. Responsible TsAGI officials and industry leaders robustly called that aircraft 'utter nonsense' (similar opinions were expressed of the Boeing 747)."
Similar controversies were known in Western aeronautical circlesSee the chapter on the Sud Aviation SE.210 Caravelle in Stroud J., Jetliners in Service since 1952, Putnam, London, 1994 but this Soviet approach showed a typical streak of dogmatism which held that problems had immutable, "scientifically correct" solutions.Stalin and the Soviet Science Wars, Pollock E., Princeton University Press, 2006 However, not all Soviet aviation engineers were so fixed in their ideas, and the configuration issue figured in a meeting held discreetly in Paris in the late 1960s between Boeing engineers (including Joe Sutter, chief project engineer for the 747, and Bob Withington, a senior engineer who was deeply involved in the SST program) and some of their Soviet counterparts. This meeting had been approved at the highest levels of both governments because each side had something the other wanted very badly: the Soviets wanted to know exactly why Boeing had put the 747 engines in under-wing pods instead of at the rear of the fuselage, while Withington and the Boeing engineers had a long list of questions about the processing and use of titanium in airframes (at the time Boeing badly needed this for their proposed Boeing 2707 SST, at Mach 3 too fast and hot for Concorde-style aluminium, and the Soviets then led the world in titanium technology). According to Sutter's account, both sides left the meeting well satisfied with the exchange of information.