The Beriev Be-200 Altair (Russian: Бериев Бе-200) is a multipurpose amphibious aircraft designed by the Beriev Aircraft Company and manufactured by Irkut. Marketed as being designed for fire fighting, search and rescue, maritime patrol, cargo, and passenger transportation, it has a capacity of 12 tonnes (12,000 litres, 3,170 US gallons) of water, or up to 72 passengers.
The name Altair was chosen after a competition amongst Beriev and Irkut staff in 2002/2003. The name Altair was chosen as it is not only the name of the alpha star in the Eagle constellation, but also because "Al" is the first part of the name of the Beriev A-40 Albatross amphibious aircraft, whose layout was the development basis for the creation of the Be-200, "ta" stands for Taganrog, and "ir" stands for Irkutsk.
Variants[]
- Be-200: Basic multirole model
- Be-200ChS/ES: Multirole model fitted to the requirements of the Soviet Ministry of Emergency Situations.
- Be-200E: English cockpit version of the Be-200ES.
- Be-200RR: Projected Rolls-Royce engined variant.
- Be-210: Projected passenger-only model.
- Be-220: Projected maritime patrol variant.
- Be-200ChS-146: Projected SaM146-powered variant.
