50 years ago: Tu-144 completed the 1st commercial supersonic flight
50 years ago, history was made with the landing of a TU-144 in nowadays Almaty, Kazakhstan. The world’s 1st commercial supersonic flight.
Today it is almost unimaginable that passengers once boarded supersonic aircraft as part of everyday air travel. Even fewer people know that the very first commercial supersonic flight in aviation history took place not between major Western capitals, but on a route connecting Soviet Union’s capital Moscow and the Soviet Socialist Republic of Kazakhstan, Alma-Ata, nowadays Almaty.
On December 26, 1975, the Tupolev Tu-144S (aircraft 004-1, registration CCCP-77106), operated by Aeroflot, entered aviation history when it completed a scheduled 3,240-kilometer flight from Moscow Domodedovo Airport to Alma-Ata Airport. The aircraft carried urgent freight and pre-new-year mail, officially marking the beginning of the world’s first commercial supersonic transport service.
The inaugural flight had been planned for December 25, but heavy snowfall in Almaty forced a 24-hour delay. So the TU-144 took of 50 years ago at 8:30am Moscow time and landed just 119 minutes later, at 1:29pm Almaty time. The pilot was the experienced test pilot Vladislav Popov, accompanied by co-pilot Ivan Vedernikov and flight engineers Anatoly Tararuhin and Igor Maiboroda.
After the crew had parked the TU-144 on the airfield, they left the aircraft via the gangway and were warmly welcomed with bouquets of flowers by Aeroflot flight attendants on the airfield. Dinmukhamed Kunaev, the First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Kazakh SSR, who witnessed the landing together with the head of the Kazakh Civil Aviation Authority, Nikolai Kuznetsov, also congratulated the crew of the TU-144S on this historic flight.
After pilot Popov answered some questions to the journalists they already prepared the supersonic plane for a flight back to Moscow on the same day. An urban legend claims that, due to a lack of cargo, a few sacks of onions were transported from Almaty to Moscow.
Because of technical issues witht the supersonic plane TU-144 it would take another two years before passengers were allowed on board. The first commercial passenger flight between Moscow and Almaty took place on November 1, 1977, with weekly scheduled service beginning the following month. Surprisingly, tickets for these futuristic journeys were relatively affordable: 82 rubles, roughly half of the average monthly Soviet salary.
Yet the era of Soviet supersonic travel was short-lived. On June 1, 1978, just seven months after launching passenger operations, Aeroflot discontinued Tu-144 flights. The immediate trigger was the crash of a Tu-144D near Yegoryevsk a week earlier. But the deeper reason was economic: even with full flights, revenues covered only a fraction of the enormous operating costs. Fuel consumption at supersonic speeds was extremely high, and maintenance of the advanced technology proved complex and expensive. Raising ticket prices was not an option either—very few Soviet citizens could afford significantly higher fares.
By the end of its commercial life, Aeroflot had completed 55 Tu-144 passenger flights, transporting 3,284 passengers in total.
Meanwhile, the competing Franco-British Concorde became far more famous and ultimately carried 2.5 million passengers, primarily on routes across the North Atlantic between New York, London, and Paris. But even Concorde could not escape economic realities, and the iconic aircraft was retired in 2003.
Since then, no commercial supersonic aircraft has returned to the skies.
But a new chapter may be on the horizon.
The American company Boom Supersonic is developing a next-generation supersonic airliner, using modern materials and technologies to avoid the high costs—and the deafening sonic boom—of earlier designs. On January 28, 2025, Boom’s test aircraft, the XB-1 Baby Boom, achieved Mach 1, becoming the first civilian aircraft to break the sound barrier since the final Concorde flight.
The company plans to begin test flights of its commercial model Overture in 2027, with hopes of launching commercial supersonic service by 2030.
If these plans succeed, the skies over Kazakhstan may one day once again sees a plane arriving with the speed of sound – continuing a story that first began 50 years ago in the snowy foothills of the Trans-Ile Alatau mountains.
More information about the 1st commercial flight of TU-144: