Talk:Ilyushin Il-86/Archive 1

Edits since 28 July
I have revamped the article entirely over the past week. There were deletions of my work earlier today, apparently on the assumption that I was undoing someone else's earlier contributions (which had been my own, in fact), and also due to my lack of cited references. The point about references is entirely fair. I have now gone into my library and added much reference. I trust the article is better for it! I may add more in coming days, though that may be overdoing it. This is essentially part of the story of how the USSR collapsed, as illustrated by the travails of a reasonably important example of its technology.

I have been unable to add footnotes and so my citations are in the body of the text. I would be very obliged if someone were able to do this; it make the article significantly easier to read without detracting from its factual aspects. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.243.203.70 (talk) 17:47, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

Cites
Although this article has a large number of cites, very few of the cites of print sources give page numbers - this makes it difficult to trace the inforation back to where it came from.Nigel Ish (talk) 19:31, 22 August 2008 (UTC)

iL or ii
is it:

Ilyushin (uppercase)i(uppercase)i-86 >>

- or -

Ilyushin (uppercase)i(lowercase)L-86 >> ?? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.33.29.198 (talk) 04:38, 15 September 2009 (UTC)

Since 1942, Soviet aircraft followed a uniform designation convention. According to it, the two first letters of the chief designer's surname were followed by a dash and one, two or three numerals. Thus, Ilyushin's aircraft were designated as IL-xxx (and, ad-hoc, SU-xxx for Sukhoi, An-xxx for Antonov, etc.) Both letters were supposed to be capitals ("uppercase") but this part of the convention was more often ignored than followed.

There were some minor problems. Transliterating the Russian Cyrilic-based alphabet into Latin was one. Thus, Yakovlev, in which the initial "Ya" is a single Russian letter, was denoted in Latin-besed alphabets as "Yak" or "Jak". Also in the same line of reasoning, "IL", often rendered as "Il" (capital and lowercase) in Latin-based alphabets, looked graphically like "LL" ("ll"). Another was the surname of chief designer Myasischev, whose "standard" abbreviation ("Mya" [actually two letters in Russian]) sounded and looked unappealing in Russian; his aircraft were thus designated as M-xxx.

Yet another problem was the design bureau led jointly by Mikoyan and Gurevich, which was designated as "MiG" (note the capital and lowercase lettering). While not a problem as such, the abbreviation of helicopter designer Mil, Mi, occupied two-thirds of his name (in Russian, since the name contains four characters -- Mil' [note the apostrophe, which denotes the Cyrillic Small Yer]-- it occupied just half the name)!

Denoting Soviet (and Russian) aircraft by both the full name of their designers and their abbreviations (as in "Tupolev Tu-95"), while common practice outside Russia (including on Wikipedia!), is both unnecessary and an error of etiquette equal to examples of erroneous usage such as "Boeing B-707" or "McDonnell Douglas DC-3". —Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.100.24.60 (talk) 18:41, 28 October 2009 (UTC) Just to add that designations such as "Sukhoi-17" are an alternative and correct to abbreviated designations such as Su-17 (resp. SU-17).

In speech, the "correct" way is to pronounce the abbreviation (i. e., "Anne" for Antonov [AN-], "Bey" for Beriev [BE-], "Ill" for Ilyushin [IL-], "Em" for Myasishchev [M-], "Me" for Mil'[MI-], "Pey" or "Peh" for Petlyakov [PE-], "Sue" for Sukhoi [SU-], "Two" for Tupolev [TU-], "Yak" for Yakovlev [YaK-], et cetera. Alternatively, one may say the name of the designer followed by the numerals, as in "Ilyushin Eighty Six" or "Ilyushin eight six". —Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.100.24.237 (talk) 17:19, 29 October 2009 (UTC)


 * Western convention has been this way for so long, it's not going to change now. Just live with it. - BilCat (talk) 17:43, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

Specifications
Any reason why this article has a non-standard presentation for the specifications? MilborneOne (talk) 18:56, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

I enjoyed this article, but I have quibbles with some of the numbers. In particular, in the "Weights" section, the maximum takeoff weight in lbs is simply wrong. The correct value, assuming the weight in kg is true, should be 473,990 lbs (rounded to 5 sig figs). In the "Speeds" section, I suspect some issue but I'm not a technical expert in the field. The note about never-exceed IAS above 8,200 meters seems to show an airspeed in excess of Mach 1.0. Using online calculators, the stated value of 416 kt IAS would be roughly 1.04 M. Can this airframe actually go supersonic? Or are the stated airspeed values incorrect? QualityDr (talk) 15:03, 2 February 2011 (UTC)

I edited out the sections about "foreign tehcnology interest and acquisition". Most of what was said there is absolutely irrelevant to the design of the Il-86. The Russians took interest in many and various Western aviation technologies, but this is neither part of the development of the 86 nor is there any reliable and serious evidence that anyone at Ilyushin seriously ever thought of that. This is supposed to be a Britannica-style encyclopedia article, not a collection of rumors and speculations. If anything, the Russians knew that copying foreign technology historically has always taken them a long time, so that counting on a copied engine of which even no sample was ever obtained, is just a ridiculous story that has absolutely no credibility and I don't know who and how cooked it up. Of course it has no place in the Wiki. The other thing to know is that Soviet designers often had bitter personal enmities, so Leonid Selyakov's story quoted above should definitely be taken with a grain of salt. Selyakov himself has the reputation of a maligner, and there is a couple of books that slam him heavily because of that (for example see Eger, "The unknown Tupolev"). — Preceding unsigned comment added by 50.133.131.85 (talk) 05:50, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

Claims that the Il-86 was to replace the Il-62
I have removed a claim (in the introduction) that the Il-86 was intended as a replacement for the Il-62. There is simply no basis to this, even at the assumptions level. The Il-86 was designed as a short to medium-range widebody and that is what it operated as, with a handful of long-range routes involving technical stops. The entire history of its specification, design and operations was widely enough covered (by Soviet standards) and freely available. This includes broad coverage of early assumptions and philosophies ("ideologies" in the Russian parlance of the period). At no stage was a long-range machine planned. The need was for a carrier on domestic routes between Moscow, Leningrad, Kiev, and Tashkent, plus a handful of other cities and resort areas. Long-range routes within the USSR were only just adopting the Il-62 in the 1970s (having used Tu-114s and multi-stop Tu-104s and Il-18s). There was no need for a widebody on these routes. Frequencies were daily or five times weekly with the Il-62, and this would have meant nonsensical twice or three times weekly frequencies with the Il-86! Post-Soviet Russian sources are voluble about Soviet failures, and if the Il-86 had been a failed Il-62 replacement, we would know this handsomely, including citations to papers, facts, and figures! Please let us keep it simple, true, supported by references, and factual! No silly assumptions, please! As to _putative_ developments that _might_ have been planned, they are properly covered in a logical place within the article. As to actual further developments, they are a different story and a different article (Il-96). — Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.100.29.220 (talk) 14:04, 25 December 2012 (UTC)

Pressing mood of the article
Obvious overall derogation. After the background section, the reader'll forget that all these lacks during its making were because the plane had to be bigger than other airliners, and will think only about general deficiency of sovetic industry. While they did other successful aircrafts through that time (looking by all other articles). And then everything else, where the negativeness wasn't outright "justified", is added like dragging in and tucking to the article as if already better to skip. It's not known what's so bad in this plane to compose it all like that. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 109.252.87.140 (talk) 18:31, 13 August 2016 (UTC)

Il-86 will no longer return to service
There was a website who reported this, but corrected as the original source turned out to be satire. There are no longer any airworthy Il-86 outside of the Russian Air Force, all units outside the Russian Air Force or museums have been scrapped or no longer airworthy. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2604:3D08:837F:7200:6017:F90D:7CBF:FAF4 (talk) 18:13, 28 March 2022 (UTC)


 * While the idea does seem rather dubious, it has been reported by Interfax – which tends to be reasonably reliable in reporting official Russian government statements. Admittedly many such statements can be considered as propaganda, but the need to return the Il-86 to service hardly seems like positive propaganda. Rosbif73 (talk) 20:52, 28 March 2022 (UTC)