The Ilyushin Il-76  was developed as a replacement for the turboprop powered Antonov An-12, mainly for military porous. Development under the design leadership of G V Novozhilov in the late 1960s resulted in the type's first flight on March 25 1971. Series production commenced in 1975 and the first examples entered Aeroflot service that year. In the now classic military war freighter configuration, the Il-76 features a high mounted wing passing above the fuselage, four powerful engines, Ttail, rear loading ramp and freight doors.

The Il-76 was also designed with short field performance in mind, operating from austere strips. To this end the Il-76 features wide span triple slotted trailing edge flaps, upper surface spoilers and near full span leading edge slats for short field performance, while the aircraft rides on a total of 20 low pressure tyres, the front nose unit featuring four wheels, the main wheel bogies having two rows of four tyres each. Freight handling is largely mechanised, requiring only two freight handlers which can be carried as part of the standard crew complement of seven.


Civil versions aricarft developed from the basic Il-76 include the Il-76T with additional fuel; the Il-76TD with increased takeoff and payload weights and D30KP2s which retain their power output to higher altitudes; and the Il-76MP firefighter.

Capacity:                                                                                                                                                                     Flightcrew of five including two pilots, flight engineer, navigator and radio operator, plus two freight handlers. Il-76MP firefighting conversion can carry 44 tonnes (97,000lb) of fire retardant in two tanks.