A Crusty Crusade: Tu-134 Wishlist - YESTERDAY'S AIRLINES

A Tu-134 had been one of the holy grail missing moulds in 400 scale and now thanks to Panda Models it has arrived. Panda don’t seem to know what to do with it though and in about a year have only produced 3 models using it, even though they have both major variants of the mould available. I know some of the partners of Panda are interested in making some 134s and I hope Panda are going to ramp up production too. Here’s what they should be making.

Before I get into the wishlist I wanted to talk about variants. As with most Soviet era types there are a myriad of variants of the Tu-134 (Nato codename ‘Crusty’) many of which are for military use and some of which are just plain bizarre. This review will focus on civilian airline variants most of which share the same basic body plan. The original Tu-134 ‘sans suffix’ was shorter, had different maingear spacing and no thrust reversers but was produced in only small numbers.

It is the Tu-134A and Tu-134B that were the major variants. Outwardly they are similar except the original A’s came with a navigator position, glass radome and chin radar. It isn’t true however that all Tu-134As had the glass nose as 34 Tu-134As and 6 Tu-134A-1s were made with the radar nose. These are the two moulds that Panda has to operate with:

This visual difference between variants means that many airline liveries can be made for both types. In this review I’ll distinguish between the two not by types but by nose configuration. I won’t always put images of both types in where the liveries are the same. To make it obvious I’ll use this indicator (in this case both variants are valid obviously):

Aeroflot

Obviously the Soviet flag carrier has to come first and the Tu-134 operated with them in a few schemes. Panda has obviously already done the delivery scheme. Aeroflot was at first not keen on the radar nosed aircraft but did operate a decent number of Tu-134Bs. The ‘new’ post Soviet Aeroflot actually never operated many Tu-134s, about 17 or so (some glazed and some solid nosed), but they continued in service long enough to get the 2003 silver scheme.

Incidentally the Tu-134As never wore the scheme applied to the original Tu-134 ‘sans suffix’ versions with the wavy flag and flag pole.

CSA

CSA was always something of a trendsetter and only operated the radar nosed version of the Tu-134A and never the glazed version. There were at least three liveries used over the years.

LOT

The Polish flag carrier operated a few Tu-134 ‘sans suffix’ and a small fleet of Tu-134As with glazed noses. Only two ex-Polish Air Force Tu-134AKs with solid noses were operated.

SP-LHG LOT - Polish Airlines Tupolev Tu-134A

Balkan Bulgarian

Balkan was actually the first foreign operator of the Tu-134 receiving 6 Tu-134 ‘sans suffix’ versions. They acquired a single glazed nose Tu-134A from the Air Force in 1974 and a glazed nose Tu-134AK in 1978 from the same source. Five further solid nose Tu-134As and AKs filled out the fleet.

Interflug

Interflug was the largest foreign operator of the Tu-134 with 39 purchased in total, although only 29 served with the airline and the other 10 were Air Force.

Malev

The Hungarian flag carrier was another major Tu-134 operator with 13 on strength, of different variants.

Other Baltics / Eastern

Eduard Marmet, CC BY-SA 3.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

Rob Hodgkins, CC BY-SA 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

Alain Durand (GFDL 1.2 or GFDL 1.2 ), via Wikimedia Commons

Konstantin von Wedelstaedt (GFDL 1.2 or GFDL 1.2 ), via Wikimedia Commons

Gordon Zammit (GFDL 1.2 or GFDL 1.2 ), via Wikimedia Commons

Ivo KruusamÃ¤gi, CC BY-SA 4.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

Turkey / Syria/ Vietnam

Russian Independents

Aktug Ates (GFDL 1.2 or GFDL 1.2 ), via Wikimedia Commons

English: Aleksandr MarkinÐ ÑƒÑÑÐºÐ¸Ð¹: ÐÐ»ÐµÐºÑÐ°Ð½Ð´Ñ€ ÐœÐ°Ñ€ÐºÐ¸Ð½, CC BY-SA 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

Felix Goetting (GFDL 1.2 or GFDL 1.2 ), via Wikimedia Commons

Leonid Faerberg (GFDL 1.2 or GFDL 1.2 ), via Wikimedia Commons

Dmitriy Pichugin (GFDL 1.2 or GFDL 1.2 ), via Wikimedia Commons

Yevgeny Pashnin, CC BY-SA 3.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

aeroprints.com, CC BY-SA 3.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

Toshi Aoki – JP Spotters, CC BY-SA 3.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

Anton Bannikov (GFDL or GFDL ), via Wikimedia Commons

Sibaviatrans – Gleb Osokin, CC BY-SA 3.0 GFDL 1.2, via Wikimedia Commons

Yamal Airlines – Alex Pereslavtsev (GFDL 1.2 or GFDL 1.2 ), via Wikimedia Commons

CIS Nations

Summary

So there we have it a pretty extensive list of Tu-134s (well over 60) just begging to get made in 400 scale. With this bunch you could make an awesome diorama of Domodedovo or Pulkovo airports! I have organised them in order of sales value i.e.:

Aeroflot
Warsaw Pact
Other Non-Soviet Operators
Baltic States
Russian
CIS Airlines

I think that there is decent sales potential in a lot of them and frankly if you’re going to make a Tu-134 mould and not use it then WTF are you doing? Big thanks go to the wonderful book by Dmitry Komissarov, which made my work here much easier. Go get it now! After that just sit back and wait for a flood of Crustys!