New pilot job duties in Russia

I guess they sent all the aircraft mechanics off to the front to try to keep the targets flying/driving.
 
Didn't need a crystal ball to see this coming. The Russians stole something on the order of 500 airliners, they're now a total loss. But most of their jets are Western, they're now a total loss. I'd not be surprised if they couldn't source the materials to fab up the parts for the Russian jets, jets are finicky things. The Russian aviation sector is going to come to a slow and grinding halt, and it won't stop for a long long time. No one is going to lease a jet to the Russians ever again, and they sure as hell can't buy hem with rubles. Perhaps the Chinese or Japanese might have a home-grown airliner program to supply the Russians, it could happen.
 
Pilawt said:
I wouldn't want to fly in any airplane I worked on mechanically ...
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I had grand visions of building an RV-7 one day, then came to the same realization. I don't think I would ever fly something I built.
 
I wonder if they will be re-using O-rings, etc. Do they have access to the parts room for filters & other hardware?
"Ivan, just pencil whip it."
 
midwestpa24 said:
I had grand visions of building an RV-7 one day, then came to the same realization. I don't think I would ever fly something I built.
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I think I might fly something I built. I am positive I would not fly something built by someone I don't know. I mean I have been in amateur built race cars I really wish I had never strapped myself into...and those were not designed to leave the ground on purpose...
 
Zeldman said:
I think I might fly something I built. I am positive I would not fly something built by someone I don't know. I mean I have been in amateur built race cars I really wish I had never strapped myself into...and those were not designed to leave the ground on purpose...
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I would fly something built by someone else, but before buying I'd have it inspected by someone very knowledgeable of the type. There are some true craftsmen that have turned out some beautiful, well built kit planes, better than any factory built plane. Then there are some others...
 
Maybe we could sell Russia to China, and then let China rebuild the aircraft? I know, we don't technically own the country, but the right "wink wink nudge nudge" to the right people should make it possible. Long term, that might not be good for us, but short term it would relieve the stress and weirdness caused by the little bald guy.
 
Albany Tom said:
I know, we don't technically own the country, but the right "wink wink nudge nudge" Hand full of cash under the table to the right people should make it possible.
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From what I understand, bribes are just normal business in Russia...

So why should the pilots be any different. ''I am sorry, one engine did not pass inspection. We will cancel flight.''

Passengers pass around the hat.

''After another look, engine Ok...''
 
Fly on a Russian piloted plane maintained by Russians in Russian Air Space under Russian ATC? Who now have no spare parts, let alone qualified mechanics?

"No" just doesn't come close to how to what I want to express.

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Just take a few more shots than usual and hope she holds together on pure courage, comrade. I would never fly on a Russian plane before all this crap.
 
Russian space program in some ways has same culture as its airline industry.

In the 60's, a pair of cosmonauts landed in Siberia ..... somewhere. They opened the hatch to get air but only partially, as it was well below freezing and of course to keep the wolf out. The recovery team finally found them in the morning. Not to worry too much - the survival kit included a gun.

https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/12852/when-where-did-the-cosmonauts-fight-wolves

The anecdote about the wolves and bears comes from Voskhod 2 on March 19, 1965:

For the Soviet crew of Voshod 2 [sic], their landing back on Earth in an isolated, very snowy forest marked a harrowing start to a new mission: survival. Getting through the ordeal would end up requiring a gun to ward off wild bears, some tricks to staying warm in below zero temperatures and cross country skiing.

Voskhod 2 landed off target in the Siberian forest, and according to the account it was in the middle of mating season for the bears and wolves which lived there. Moscow had no idea where they landed for some time, so the two cosmonauts had to survive in the forest until they were retrieved by a rescue team.

You can read the full story in the Discovery article I snagged this from. Wikipedia says the landing site was 59°34′N 55°28′E.

The first-hand account captured in Air and Space neglects to mention any use of the gun:

We were only too aware that the taiga where we had landed was the habitat of bears and wolves. It was spring, the mating season, when both animals are at their most aggressive. We had only one pistol aboard our spacecraft, but we had plenty of ammunition. As the sky darkened, the trees started cracking with the drop in temperature—a sound I was so familiar with from my childhood—and the wind began to howl.

Even though mission control had no idea where we were or whether we had survived, our families were informed that we had landed safely and were resting in a secluded dacha before returning to Moscow.​
 
Mtns2Skies said:
I'm pretty sure Japan isn't supplying much of anything to Russia. Japan is far, far more western aligned than China so that's kind of a weird thing to say.
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Good point. Its just that they're the only ones I could envision being sufficiently technically sophisticated to pull it off. The Indians might be able to, but I don't think they've ever made a jet airliner there. I think they have produced a few turboprops though.
 
Don’t they still have those old bear counter rotating turbo prop bombers they turned into passenger transports?
 
The TU-204 was a quasi promising 757 analog.. it is 'glass'

The fleet was going to have a reckoning real soon. This was posted to several social media platforms. Check out all that INOP! My favorite is the brake fan inoperative so having to wait one minute before retracting the gear

https://youtube.com/shorts/YpDO95SvyCA?feature=share

They have a fledgling program between the superjet, the MC21, and the few others in the pipeline as well as TU-204, etc.. this may usher in a new era of Russian aviation
 
I remember landing in St. Peterburg back in 2000. LH, not a Russian airline. As we taxied in we went by a number of airliners that looked like they belonged in a boneyard. Then I realized that they were still flying those. No way!
 
Ghery said:
I remember landing in St. Peterburg back in 2000. LH, not a Russian airline. As we taxied in we went by a number of airliners that looked like they belonged in a boneyard. Then I realized that they were still flying those. No way!
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There's a company at our home field that services, refurbishes, parts out and scraps old airliners. We see a lot of aircraft there from various Russian airlines, and many of them being scrapped aren't so old -- A320, B-757, B-777 ...

Here's an Orenair B-777ER transitioning to beer cans:

 
Had a good friend in college from Russia. He was going home once during break and I asked him if he was flying Aeroflot. He said “no, I want to live”. The Germans call the airline “Aeroschrott”, Schrott being the German word for junk.
 
I flew on Aeroflot, before the USSR broke up. A domestic flight. Foreign travelers had a separate waiting room, where the Communist Party provided English-language pamphlets. After I read one about how terrible the KKK is (in this case, the propaganda was rather accurate), I read another about how the Tupolev airliner was very popular.

We then were herded in a line to the plane, which turned out to be the very same model of Tupolev. Our line of passengers passed beneath a running auxiliary power unit.

Onboard, I found that Tupolev provided just one lav, which I avoided due to some colorful fluid leaking under its door into the aisle. Elsewhere, the carpet runner in the aisle was twisted over, so that when the attendants pushed their rusty cart they had to lift first one set of wheels, then another, to get it past the obstruction posed by the twist in the carpet runner.

That Tupolev was fast. I’ll give it that. But I’m pretty sure I know why Boeings and Airbuses started appearing in Russia after the USSR split up.
 
midwestpa24 said:
I had grand visions of building an RV-7 one day, then came to the same realization. I don't think I would ever fly something I built.
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Ditto. Had a short discussion about this with my wife once. Yeah that’s a hard stop. I’m lucky to piece together foam rc planes that are airworthy.
 
It's easy to make fun of the Russian line pilots' predicament, but remember this situation exists due to circumstances they had no control over. Imagine yourself in their situation and it may not be so amusing.
 
I looked at some Russian military aircraft, up close and unhurried. Mediocre workmanship - gaps in butt joints, ill fitting radomes and gear doors, apparently dissimliar metal corrosion, crude connectors for the avionics, and their hot metal tech was low rent.
 
Pilawt said:
This may be the highlight of Russian aviation -- a very capable airplane for its mission. And to be geographically specific, it's Ukrainian.
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It wasn't Russian aviation. It was Soviet. The originals were made in Kyiv, and most of them were made in Poland.
 
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