[citation needed] The seventh quad-engined, long-range jet airliner to fly (the predecessors being the De Havilland Comet (1949), Avro Jetliner (1949), Boeing 707 (1954), Douglas DC-8 (1958), Vickers VC10 (1962), and experimental Tupolev Tu-110 (1957)), it was the first such type to be operated by the Soviet Union and a number of allied nations.

The Il-62 entered Aeroflot civilian service on 15 September 1967 with an inaugural passenger flight from Moscow to Montreal[citation needed] and remained the standard long-range airliner for the Soviet Union (and later, Russia) for several decades.

The Il-62 and the British Vickers VC10 are the only commercial airliners with four engines fitted in twinned/paired nacelles by the sides of, and beneath, a T-shaped empennage (T-tail).

In addition, aerodynamic wash (shadow) from the wing blankets the tail when the nose is pitched up (high angle of attack) leading the aircraft into a condition known as deep stall.

The prototype with AL-7PB engines (registered СССР-06156) first flew on 3 January 1963, but crashed after clipping a perimeter fence during a maximum-weight testing flight of the development program.

There were two fatal Il-62 losses involving engine failure, both occurring with aircraft owned by LOT Polish Airlines, which had also leased a number of Il-62s from Aeroflot and Tarom.

The higher-fatality accident (183) was a fully laden Il-62M Flight 5055 on 9 May 1987, which experienced a rear fuselage fire that possibly went unnoticed by the crew, hence their decision not to land at one of two nearby airports.

Control of the plane was eventually lost on the return flight to Warsaw, most likely due to one of the auxiliary fuel tanks fitted to some LOT Il-62s having ignited.

The other was an unmodified (early version) NK-8-4-powered Il-62 Flight 007, which crashed on 14 March 1980 with 87 fatalities after being fitted with an engine that had previously caused vibration problems when used on two other LOT aircraft (the investigation suggested that the turbine disc was damaged before its final installation).

Powerplant failure of the type that afflicted the LOT aircraft was extremely rare because bearing wear is generally identified by vibration tests during maintenance.

In 2010, 30 years after the loss of Flight 007, an investigation of previously unreleased archives at Instytut Pamięci Narodowej revealed that during the industrial unrest of the 1980s LOT had been instructed by the Polska Rzeczpospolita Ludowa authorities to effect operational cost savings by over-exploitation of service life of its jet engines (see LOT Flight 007 § Causes of disaster).

[citation needed] Several special conversions were made to the basic Il-62, the main ones being the Il-62 and Il-62M salon VIP versions used by heads of state, and the Il-62M airborne command aircraft (just one example) used by the Russian government.

Apart from basic interior changes, RA-86570 features hush-kitted engines and Honeywell electronics with global communication ability via satellite, and an Inmarsat system.

The aircraft was used as a command post during the combat of forest fires in the Far East, when dealing with the Chechen terrorist attack in Kaspiysk when an apartment building was blown up, and to bring a Russian Deputy Foreign Minister to Sharjah in 1996 and from there, collecting the crew of an Il-76 freighter who had escaped from the Taliban militia in Afghanistan.

The aircraft features pressurised cabin and freight holds (with fuselage dimensions of 3.8 m width x 4.1 m height), duplex all-mechanical flight controls, though with twin electric motors for tailplane incidence control; hydraulic nosewheel steering, landing gear and tail strut actuation, and wheel brakes.

Control surfaces include a variable-incidence tailplane with dynamically and weight-compensated elevators with trim tabs, triple-section tabbed ailerons (outermost for low speed and innermost for high speed) which are interlinked with a torsion bar, spoilerons (Il-62M), spoilers and lift dumpers, and pneumatically actuated thrust reversers on the two outboard engines (the reversers are flight-rated on the Il-62M).

Soviet/Russian and Warsaw Pact sovereign examples are additionally fitted with triplex "Odd Rods" (NATO code name) IFF (identification friend or foe) air defence transponders identifiable by three closely spaced short aerials.

Fire extinguishers are sited in engine nacelles, flightdeck compartment, cabin crew rest areas and toilets.

As the Il-62 was developed at about the same time as the VC10, to which it bears a marked external resemblance, British Cold War commentators implied that the VC10 design may have been copied by dubbing the Il-62 the "VC10-ski.

After the introduction of the Il-62M, Aeroflot (the largest operator of the plane) gradually upgraded and later replaced its fleet of NK-8 powered Il-62s with the newer Soloviev D-30 KU-powered Il-62M.

[6] It set several international records in its class, mostly exemplifying a range capability far in excess of the conservative Aeroflot calculations applied in Soviet times.

In April 2015 two EMERCOM Il-62Ms (including RA-86495 of the Russian Federation Air Force) were used to evacuate around 900 foreign nationals and Yemenis from Sanaa during the Saudi-led military operation against Yemen.

The braking system employed the reverse thrust of the outer engines only, and if for some reason one or other failed to engage, the aircraft could become difficult to steer for an unprepared pilot.

In 1968 the new political trend called "New Economic Mechanism" introduced by the Hungarian Council of Ministers led to the deletion of the order, because of financing problems.

From 1992 Irish tour operators contracted Aeroflot to carry tourists to the eastern US (Miami) and later to the Caribbean, Central America and Mexico, using Il-62Ms.

In addition to military use, it has been used as a personnel or head-of-state transport by Russia (at least eight examples), Ukraine, East Germany, Georgia (2748552), Uzbekistan (UK-86569), Gambia (C5-RTG), Mozambique, Sudan (ST-PRA), Cuba, North Korea, and Czechoslovakia, the government of which used an Il-62 (OK-BYV) and three Il-62Ms between 1974 and 1996.

Both have government liveries and VIP interior configurations and are given the call sign "Chammae" (national bird of North Korea).

This figure and the list below includes planes that were still operable but were deemed uneconomic to return to service due to their age and/or flight hours (YR-IRD and CU-T1283).

[26] As the first long-range jet airliner to be put into service by a number of nations, some retired Il-62s have been converted into museums and other uses in countries such as the Czech Republic, Germany, Austria, Cuba and China.

On 23 October 1989, DDR-SEG was intentionally landed on the 860 metres (2,820 ft) short grass Stolln/Rhinow airfield by Interflug's chief Il-62 pilot Heinz-Dieter Kallbach [de] in a famous but potentially dangerous manoeuvre.