Aerie movie

- Tu-134B airliner, re-manufactured into VIP version;

- 3 separated cabins for passengers: VIP, second-class and third-class.

“Aerie movie” is the article title in The Kommersant Money newspaper published in May of 2003, which describes this project.

Actually, aircrafts are not our specialization, but when one day a friendly tuning company had offered us a team-work, we couldn’t resist temptation to try our strength. As a result, we’ve equipped four aircrafts in total: three Tu-134 and one Yak-42. Two of them belonged to private persons from Kazakhstan and two – to Russian corporations. We are going to speak about one intended for a Russian corporation leadership transportation with accompanying.

From the beginning we were confronted with unexpected difficulties. Of course, there were various European and American analogues, installed in western business class aircrafts. But, firstly, in this case cost would be far beyond the approved budget. Secondly, all the equipment had to be certificated in Russia anyway.

Moreover, a temperature range demand was made, that doesn’t even exist in Europe or United States. When an airplane arrives, for example in Texas or somewhere in the north, it’s conveyed into a hangar, where kept till next flight. In our conditions you can only dream about it. A VIP aircraft can easily stand for a week somewhere in Norilsk at the temperature of -40С, and just two hours before passenger arrival will be warmed up with a powerful stream of hot air to a normal temperature.

We’ve experienced it in winter Minsk, when during the working process plant workers had decided to heat up the object a little. As a result, people in the cockpit were working in t-shirts and sweating all over while in the tail they had to put on coats and mittens.

The second obvious problem is vibration. A household DVD is certainly not designed for work in such conditions.

The third is an airplane electric circuit, which has its own specifications. Besides, on the ground it’s connected to common electrical network, so really it can be tested only during the flight. So we had to work in an uncertainty.

The equipment question was resolved quickly enough – we’d decided to use car apparatus – its field-performance data is the closest to the object’ conditions. All the wiring – types of used cables, cable tracks – was developed in the Tupolev Design Bureau. Our drafts and block diagrams were visualized in the same place; also Tupolev Design Bureau was responsible for registration authorities’ approval of the project. Surely, without them it couldn’t be done.

In the plane we were doing only electronics. The main idea of the project is the sectioning into cabins. Four cabins: kitchen area in the front, first-class (VIP) cabin for the main passenger, second-class for following party and third-class for others. Our systems’ priorities were also distributed according to this plan. Home cinema was located in the first-class cabin along with the equipment providing maximum possible audio and video controls. ELAN multiroom processor in the second-class and third-class cabins permitted passengers to watch and listen separated sources simultaneously with built-in acoustics and IR headphones.

Whole system could be operated either with ELAN button panels or Crestron control panels in VIP cabin.