OREANDA-NEWS. October 23, 2009.   It will be 50 years since the maiden flight of AN-24 passenger airplane for local air routes. In that first flight the aircraft was controlled by the crew consisting of: G.I.Lysenko (captain), Yu.V.Kurlin (co-pilot), V.N.Popov (navigator), A.A.Kruts (flight engineer), P.S.Melnichenko (radio operator) and Ya.I.Ryzhik (chief engineer on flight tests). G.I.Lysenko said in his memories about that flight: “We have had the classical and perfect landing, which is so nice for each pilot. Our hearts were rejoicing. It seemed, we were flying on this aircraft for long time”.

AN-24 was developed to replace old Il-14, Il-12 and Li-2 aircraft powered by piston engines. The new 50-seat aircraft was equipped with two Ivchenko turboprops of 2550 h.p. each. It differed from the predecessors with higher flight speed, increased payload, flight productivity, life between overhauls, reduced prime cost of transportation, high technology of maintenance, possibility to be operated from/to poor equipped and unpaved airfields under various climate conditions.

Firstly in the world, the glue-welding connections in the fuselage and tail unit instead of standard riveting were used. This new technology was developed by specialists of O.K Antonov’s Design Bureau in cooperation with Institute of electric welding named after E.O.Paton of Academy of Sciences of the USSR. Owing to this technology, aircraft production labour-intensiveness and costs, the airplane weight were considerably reduced, the strength and airframe durability were increased.

The 86th United air detachment of Ukrainian Authority of Civil Air Fleet became the first operator of AN-24. In September 1962, it was held a technical flight from Kyiv to Krasnodar with landings in Odessa and Sipheropol. In October that year, AN-24 carried its first passengers on the route: Kyiv-Herson-Kyiv.

AN-24 started operation very intensively. During the first year of regular operation (1963), average annual flight duration of one aircraft was 1400 hours. No one of previous aircraft had such flight time (Il-14, Il-12 and Li-2 had annual flight duration about 500-600 hours). In 1979, AN-24s were operated on 978 air routes of Soviet Union. That year they carried about 30% of Aeroflot passengers.

AN-24 became the basis for whole family of the airplanes, which includes more than 40 modifications and variants of the basic aircraft. Among them are: 44-seat passenger AN-24F; 48-52-seat AN-24B; export version of AN-24B – AN-24V; variant with RU19-300 additional power plant – AN-24RV; AN-24T and AN-24RT freighters; AN-24FK aerial photography aircraft; AN-24RV VIP version; special-purpose aircraft: AN-24LR Toros for fish finding, AN-24LP fire fighter, AN-24USh trainer, AN-24PS for search and rescue operations, AN-24RR radioprospecting; AN-24 Troyanda; AN-26 light transport, etc.

The aircraft of AN-24 family were serially produced in Kyiv (1959-1979), Ulan-Ude (1965-1970) and Irkut (1967- 1971). As a total, more than 1340 airplanes were constructed. Besides, AN-24 was produced in China under designation of Y7.

In 1982, AN-24RV controlled by female crew headed by M.Popovich and G.Korchuganova set 71 world records of speed, flight altitude and climb time for the turboprops with take off weight of 20-25 t.

Owing to high performances of AN-24, these aircraft were exported to 38 countries of the world. AN-24 took the first place in the USSR as for the number of the exported airplanes.

According to ANTONOV ASTC data, at present, more than 430 AN-24s are being operated in 26 countries of the world. AN-24 has Type Certificate issued by State Aviation Administration of Ukraine on March 23, 2001.