Tupolev Tu - 104 The Tupolev Tu - 104 ( NATO reporting name : Camel ) was a twin - engined medium - range narrow - body turbojet - powered Soviet airliner and the world ' s first successful jet airliner . Although it was the sixth jet airliner to fly ( following , in order , the British Vickers Type 618 Nene - Viking , de Havilland Comet , Canadian Avro Canada C102 Jetliner , US Boeing 367 - 80 and French Sud Caravelle ) , the Tu - 104 was the second to enter regular service ( with Aeroflot ) and the first to provide a sustained and successful service ( the Comet had been withdrawn following a series of crashes due to structural failure ) . The Tu - 104 was the sole jetliner operating in the world between 1956 and 1958 . In 1957 , Czechoslovak Airlines – ČSA , ( now Czech Airlines ) became the first airline in the world to fly routes exclusively with jet airliners , using the Tu - 104A variant . In civil service , the Tu - 104 carried over 90 million passengers with Aeroflot ( then the world ' s largest airline ) , and a lesser number with ČSA , while it also saw operations with the Soviet Air Force . Its successors include the Tu - 124 ( the first turbofan - powered airliner ) , the Tu - 134 and the Tu - 154 . Design and development . At the beginning of the 1950s , the Soviet Union ' s Aeroflot airline needed a modern airliner with better capacity and performance than the piston engined aircraft then in operation . The design request was filled by the Tupolev OKB , which based their new airliner on its Tu - 16 ' Badger ' strategic bomber . The wings , engines , and tail surfaces of the Tu - 16 were retained in the airliner , but the new design adopted a wider , pressurised fuselage designed to accommodate 50 passengers . The prototype ( SSSR - L5400 ) first flew on June 17 , 1955 with Yu . L . Alasheyev at the controls at Kharkov plant in Ukraine . It was fitted with drag chutes to shorten the landing distance by up to , since at the time , not many aerodromes had sufficiently long runways . The arrival of the Tu - 104 in London during a 1956 state visit by Nikolai Bulganin and Nikita Khrushchev totally surprised Western observers who , at the time , thought the Soviets lacked the advanced technology required to build a commercial airliner with such performance . By the time production ceased in 1960 , about 200 had been built . The Tu - 104 was powered by two Mikulin AM - 3 turbojets placed at the wing / fuselage junction ( similar to the de Havilland Comet ) . The crew consisted of 5 people : two pilots , a navigator ( placed in the glazed " bomber " nose ) , a flight engineer and a radio operator ( the radio operator was later eliminated ) . The airplane raised great curiosity by its lavish " Victorian " interior – called so by some Western - hemisphere observers – due to the materials used : mahogany , copper and lace . Tu - 104 pilots were trained on the Il - 28 bomber , followed by mail flights on an unarmed Tu - 16 bomber painted in Aeroflot colors , between Moscow and Sverdlovsk . Pilots with previous Tu - 16 experience transitioned into the Tu - 104 with relative ease . The Tu - 104 was considered tricky to fly , as it was heavy in the air , and had poor response to controls , with a tendency to stall at low speeds . Experience with the Tu - 104 led the Tupolev Design Bureau to develop the Tupolev Tu - 124 , designed for local markets , and subsequently the more commercially successful Tu - 134 Operational history . On September 15 , 1956 , the Tu - 104 began revenue service on Aeroflot ' s Moscow - Omsk - Irkutsk route , replacing the piston - engined Ilyushin Il - 14 . The flight time was reduced from 13 hours and 50 minutes to 7 hours and 40 minutes , and the new jet dramatically increased the level of passenger comfort . By 1957 , Aeroflot had placed the Tu - 104 in service on routes from Vnukovo Airport in Moscow to London , Budapest , Copenhagen , Beijing , Brussels , Ottawa , Delhi , and Prague . In 1957 , ČSA Czechoslovak Airlines became the only export customer for the Tu - 104 , placing the aircraft on routes to Moscow , Paris and Brussels . ČSA bought six Tu - 104As ( four new and two used examples ) configured for 81 passengers . Three of these aircraft were subsequently written off ( one due to a refuelling incident in India and another to a pilot error without fatalities ) . In 1959 , the plane was leased to Sir Henry Lunn Ltd . ( Lunn Poly ) of London who used the plane for 12 holidays to Russia and boasted of a 4 . 5 hours flight . The Tu - 104 continued to be used by Aeroflot throughout the 1960s and 1970s . Some 16 aircraft were lost in crashes ( some due to hijackings / bombings ) . The safety record is comparable to other early jet airliners of its day , but was poor compared to more modern airliners . Aeroflot retired the Tu - 104 from civil service in March 1979 following a fatal accident at Moscow . Following this , several aircraft were transferred to the Soviet military , which used them as staff transports and to train cosmonauts in zero gravity . However , after a Tu - 104 crash in February 1981 killed 52 people ( 17 of whom were senior army and naval staff ) , the type was permanently removed from service . The last flight of the Tu - 104 was a ferry flight to Ulyanovsk Aircraft Museum in 1986 . Variants . " Data from : " Accidents and incidents . According to the American Flight Safety Foundation , between 1958 and 1981 , 16 Tu - 104s were lost in crashes out of 37 aircraft written off ( hull loss rate = 18 % ) . Noted incidents include : Illustration ( Tu - 104A ) . < br >