the "corncordski" never entered commercial flight and the program was cancelled after the crash. And there you have to ask was it really a russian design and not just a concorde... there are a lot of people who think the russians stole the concorde design...
Of course they stole the design. AFAIK, they (the Tupolevs) doesn't even deny this today. However, they could not reassemble it identically, hence the differencies. That aircraft actually had some advantages over the concorde, like superiour manouverability (it also had some disadvantages, like a weaker structure).
And the "corncordski" (TU-144 ) actually entered commercial flight after the crash in France AFAIK, but only for a relatively short period of time, and only inside the Soviet Union.
There are some (pretty much confirmed) rumours regarding the "concordski" crash (there are many theories, but this is the one I believe in the most), that says that a French military Mirage III jet aircraft took off before the Concorde show begun, and then stayed away during it. It's mission was to take close up pictures of the "concordski" in flight. Then, when it was time for the "concordski" to enter the scene, it snuk up upon it to take the pictures. The "concordski" pilots were not notified about this, and made some evasive manouvers to avoid a collision, which cased one or several engines to stall. On Jet Aircrafts you can restart engines by dropping the nose and let the wind blow through the turbines to get them going, and then "add some fuel and sparks" ;-). The pilot did this, but the show was performed at low altitude, and when he realized he was too close to the ground he had to pull up fast, too fast for the aircrafts specs, and the structure broke down.
But a funny thing is that at least one concordski is in operation **today** AFAIK. It is used in an **American** research project. Kind of ironic, huh? :-)
"- And the winner is ...?" ;-)
