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Tupolev dismisses all of tycoons’ requests for converting warplane into business jet

Turning Tupolev-160 into a passenger plane would be a "very costly affair"

Tu-160 warplane Marina Lystseva/TASS

Tu-160 warplane

© Marina Lystseva/TASS

MOSCOW, November 13. /TASS/. Wealthy foreign clients regularly address the Russian aircraft-building company Tupolev for making a private supersonic business class jet on the basis of Russia’s Strategic bombers Tupolev-160 or Tupolev-22M3, Tupolev Deputy CEO for Design and R&D, Valery Solozobov, has told TASS.

"Big business tycoons in different countries (an Arab sheikh, a millionaire in Australia and a wealthy Greek among them) keep asking us to make a personal supersonic plane on the basis of the missile-carrying Tupolev-160 or long-range bomber Tupolev-2M3. We get such messages regularly, some of them through the Rosoboronexport agency," he said.

Read also

Russia’s upgraded Tu-160 strategic bomber prototype to perform debut flight in 2018

All of the requests have been turned own.

"Turning Tupolev-160 into a passenger plane would be a very costly affair. It is far less expensive to build a plane anew and without the know-hows used in creating the Tupolev-160," he explained, adding that a business class jet does not need a variable shape wing. Besides, some of the solutions used in the Tupolev-160 are classified.

"The retractable canards might be used, but they are not always necessary. Besides, most of the Tupolev-160 know-hows are secret, so building even a passenger configuration of this plane for private clients would be wrong," Solozobov said.

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