Editing Tupolev Tu-144 (section)

====Incident on 25 January 1978====
Tu-144 pilot Aleksandr Larin remembers a troublesome flight around 25 January 1978. The flight with passengers suffered the failure of 22 to 24 onboard systems. Seven to eight systems failed before takeoff, but given the large number of foreign TV and radio journalists and also other foreign notables aboard the flight, it was decided to proceed with the flight to avoid the embarrassment of cancellation. After takeoff, failures continued to multiply. While the aircraft was supersonic en route to the destination airport, Tupolev bureau's crisis centre predicted that the front and left landing gear would not extend and that the aircraft would have to land on the right gear alone, at a landing speed of over {{convert|300|km/h|mph kn|abbr=on}}. Due to expected political fallout, [[Soviet]] leader [[Leonid Brezhnev]] was personally notified of what was going on in the air. With the accumulated failures, an alarm siren went off immediately after takeoff, with sound and volume similar to that of a civil defence warning. The crew could not figure a way to switch it off so the siren stayed on throughout the remaining 75 minutes of the flight. Eventually, the captain ordered the navigator to borrow a pillow from the passengers and stuff it inside the siren's horn. After all the suspense, all landing gear extended and the aircraft landed.<ref name= "Melik-Karamov 2000"/>

A subsequent flight of Tu-144 on around 30 May 1978, not long before the type was withdrawn from passenger service, involved valve failure on one of the fuel tanks.<ref name= "Melik-Karamov 2000"/>