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You might have seen this plane before and might have seen this video before. Thats right, its the 200,000 subscriber special video, and we are going back to the root of where it all began without the deep base. The KR-860.

But the story of this legendary aircraft doesn’t start in Russia or some spy going over 747 blueprints, but rather at the Paris Airshow in 1999.

This was a very special year as aircraft firms were debuting the new latest aircraft designs to tackle the increasing problem of airport congestion.

Airports could only take so many aircraft per day, and issued airlines limited slot pairs - a single landing and takeoff per week. Some airports were even full, like New York’s JFK and london’s heathrow, resulting in auctions for stunning prices - millions of dollars for airlines for a single slot pair in the worlds hottest cities.

So how could this problem be solved?

Bigger aircraft!

Naturally both Boeing and Airbus threw their hats into the ring, with the Boeing 747X and the Airbus A380, both of which you can check out here on the channel.

But its the third contender that is frankly, the coolest.

The sukhoi Kr-860. Sukhoi design buerau is more famous for it’s military fighters and attack aircraft throughout the Cold war and in modern day Russia, but this wasn’t the first time they strayed into the crazy aircraft territory, having worked before on the somewhat famous T-4 bomber project and less famous, but even more impressive T-4MS.

Kr stands for Krilya Rossii, which in engish is “wings of Russia” and the 860 refers to the total amount of passengers this aircraft was built to carry.

Which was more than both the western competitors to boast.

The idea was for the plane to come in 3 variants:

The specs listed at the Paris air show were bonkers and 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).

But not content with just building the next generation super jumbo, 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. This 800 figure didn’t really take into account today’s version of business 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 unlike other designs thrown about in their era 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 liquid petroleum gas variant, and this is the variant that would’ve been the most interesting for Russia itself. What bonkers about this design is that the aircraft would have been able to tap the gas, whilst in flight, to power the engines. Technology also researched and experimented on Tupolev Tu-206. This would mean that the plane could effectively fly for free by sipping away on its cargo, but even more importantly for Russia, that it could connect it’s remote gas fields with the rest of the country or export it because building pipelines in extreme temperatures and terrains can be even more expensive.

But if trains onboard wasn’t nutty enough, we have to talk about its escalators. Yes thats right, escalators, with an S, because there are three.

Let's watch!