The Yak-40 was a popular regional jet airliner designed and made in the Soviet Union between the 1960s and 1980s. It was designed to fly into poorly equipped airports and served over 200 Russian destinations in the 1980s.

The Yakovlev Yak-40 was designed in the early 1960s to meet an Aeroflot requirement for a regional airliner to replace its fleet of ageing mid sized airliners.

This aircraft had to be capable of landing at poorly equipped airports that had relatively short runways.

Unlike most airliners in this class it has straight wings so it could meet these requirements.

The first of five prototypes made it’s initial flight on 21 October 1966, production began in 1967 and they started entering service in 1968.

Between 1967 and 1981 just over 1,000 were produced and sold around the world.. Only 22 remained in service by July 2019

This model represents a Yak-40 OK-HEQ flying for Czechoslovak Airlines in August 1982.

AZmodel 1/144 kit completed by Leigh Edmonds in July 2023.