Russian A380 / 747 - The Super Jumbo That Never Got Built.

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This aircraft by all accounts looked like a cross between an A380 and Boeing 747, but was also totally bonkers. It had extra features like escalators and could drink liquid gas inflight through a guzzling straw.

If you love aviation, then you know that the A380 is one of the coolest aircraft ever built. With two levels the plane can carry 555 passengers, or up to 800 if the aircraft was completely economy.

Airlines looking for a huge airframe to fly a long distance could choose between the A380, or the original queen of the skies, the Boeing 747.

However, did you know that there was a third option? A Russian…A380 Super Jumbo?

Introducing the Sukhoi KR-860.

Originally revealed to the world at the 2001 paris airshow. Its name, Sukhoi KR-860, is made up of two – Sukhoi refers to the manufacture, KR means Kryla Rossii, which in engish is “wings of Russia” and the 860 refers to the total amount of passengers this aircraft was built to carry.

Sukhoi was a Russian aerospace firm that also builds a multitude of fighter aircraft for the military and a natural choice for new passenger aircraft.

They didn’t however actually build a real KR-860, bur rather a static 1/24 model to showcase their concept and raise awareness.

The real aircraft would be 80 meters long, with a wingspan of 88 meters, with the wings folding up to allow access to airport gates much like the Boeing 777X.

Compared to a Boeing 747 and Airbus A380, the aircraft was over 12 meters longer than a 747 and 15 meters longer than an A380. So it was positively huge!

It would have been powered with either GE engines, Pratt and Witnee, or with eight Kuznetsov NK-93 engines and would have a range of around 15,000 km (9,321 mi; 8,099 nmi). Next to an airbus a380 and boeing 747, the plane

This is where it gets even cooler. There were actually three different models of the KR-860 proposed.

The first was your standard passenger version that could carry 860 passengers across two levels in three classes, or over 1000 if the whole aircraft was economy. I think today it would have been a bit less than the 800 as back then they never imagine lie-flat beds or even entire private suites like onboard the A380. But there still would have been plenty more room onboard for more passengers

The 2nd type of aircraft was your standard freighter version. But like other designs thrown about in their era, like the Lockheed super transport which we will get to another time, it could carry full containers. As in, the containers you see on boats and the back of trains, without being de loaded. There was even a rumour that traincars would be able to be loaded into it without coming off tracks… wouldn’t that be a sight!

The third type was a petrolim gas variant, from remote Russian oil fields. What bonkers about this design is that the aircraft would have been able to tap the gas, whilst in flight, to power the aircraft. This would mean that the plane could effectively fly for free by sipping away on its cargo.

But it gets even better.

Passengers would be seated on two decks. The lower wider deck would have passengers arranged in a 12-abreast seating configuration with three aisles (perhaps 3x3x3x3), a first for commercial aircraft, and the upper deck would have 9 seats abreast with two aisles.

With a load of 1000 passengers onboard, the aircraft would need a way to unload them quickly and effectively at airports… using escalators. The aircraft design had three escalators built into the hull, one at the front of the aircraft, one in the middle and one at the end that quickly transported passengers either on or off, whilst at the same time using up to three jet bridges.

Why did it never fly?

In the end, like many things, it is all about money.

he concept for the aircraft began in the 1990s with a forecast programme cost of US$10 billion (early published figures were US$4–5.5B),, or in today's money, $15 billion USD, and called for the first aircraft to be built before 2000. With an estimated price per unit of about US$160–200 million (an earlier published estimate was US$150 million).

Considering that it cost Airbus $25 Billion USD over 15 years to make the A380, we know the real cost would have been much higher. In fact, an airbus A380 costs around $440 million USD per unit, the Russian version was impossibly cheap. Sukhoi knew this, and asked for financial help from China and India, as well as the Russian government, to build it.

Because India and China would be the primary operators of the type, and that the aircraft would see little action within Russia itself, the government diverted the funds to other projects in 2001.

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