Test pilot Yuri Alasheev sat at the helm and took off – the very first test flight of the first Soviet passenger jet plane. This plane was created unprecedented in aviation at a pace – only began to design it in 1954. And it was all because the cunning Soviet engineers did not begin to build the plane again, but only transformed a bomber Tu-16 into a passenger liner. Now, that was quite a conversion! They did not do this in the West, of course; there were jet passenger aircraft originally designed for this purpose. Well, their bourgeois calmness did not do anything good: English plane Comet of the De Haviland company, which entered the passenger line back in 1952, was removed from operation after two plane crashes and returned to the sky only in 1958. And our ex-bomber has been carrying passengers regularly since 1956.