Boeing 777, a wide-bodied passenger airliner designed in the early 1990s, went on its maiden flight in 1994, entering into regular service a year later.
Its maximum takeoff weight is up to 350 tonnes (777-300ER version), wing span 64.8 meters, length 73.86 meters, height 18.99 meters, range (for 77-200LR version) about 17,500 kilometers. The plane can seat up to 451 people, depending on the version.
It’s the world’s biggest twin-engine passenger jetliner with the longest flying range. In 2005, Boeing 777-200LR set an absolute world record in nonstop flights for passenger planes having traveled a distance of 21,601 kilometers.
The plane has two engines supplied by Rolls-Royce, General Electric or Pratt & Whitney.
Boeing has made about 1,200 such planes. More than 500 companies around the world make some 3 million components for them.
Boeing-777 is operated by more than 60 airlines in different parts of the world, including Russia’s Aeroflot, Transaero, Orenair, and Nordwind Airlines.
Up to date there was only one accident with a Boeing-777 plane on July 6, 2013, when it crash-landed in San Francisco and burst into flames. Three people died.
On March 8, 2014, a Boeing-777 plane belonging to Malaysia Airlines disappeared from the radars en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. The plane and all of the 239 people aboard it are still missing.
The plane that crashed in Ukraine is a 777-2H6ER version of the Boeing, serial number 28411. It made its first flight precisely 17 years ago on July 17, 1997; registration number 9M-MRD. It was flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur.