History: Beriev Be-200

The Beriev Be-200 Altair is a russian built multipurpose amphibian aircraft. The aircraft was designed by the Beriev Aircraft Company and was built by Irkut. The Beriev Be-200 is intended to serve as a fire fighting, search and rescue, maritime patrol and even passenger transport aircraft. It can carry up to 12 tonnes (12 000 litres, 3 170 gallons) of water or 72 passengers.

Development

The Beriev Be-200 project was started in 1989 with the purpose of building a water bomber for the Russian Government which approved the project on 8 December 1990. The design team was spearheaded by Alexander Yavkin. One year later at the Paris Air Show the project was made public and a model was displayed at the show. The full scale mockup was constructed by Beta Air.

The Beriev Aviation Company was in charge of the design of the Beriev Be-200 together with the Russian Irkutsk Aircraft Production Association, which is currently part of the Irkut Corporation. While Beriev did the development, design and documentation, the testing of the prototypes, the certification and the support of production models the Irkut Corporation was assigned the production preparation, manufacture of tooling, production of the four prototypes and the production aircraft and the spare parts. Currently both companies are part of the state-owned United Aircraft Corporation

Production

Design

Technology

Operational Service

Variants

• Be-200 — Basic multirole model
• Be-200ChS (Бе-200ЧС) or Be-200ES (Emergency Services) — Multirole aircraft specially customized for the needs of the Russian Ministry of Emergency Situations
• Be-200E — English cockpit version of the Be-200ES
• Be-200RR — Proposed Rolls-Royce engined variant.
• Be-210 — Proposed Passenger only model
• Be-220 — Proposed maritime patrol variant.

Competitors

Deliveries

Accidents

Specifications

Further reading

List of seaplanes and flying boats