The most exotic flights of Aeroflot during the USSR era

The MAKS Airshow organization shares a selection from the Pravda publication of the most interesting and sometimes unexpected flights that Aeroflot operated during the Soviet Union.

🙂 Moscow — Havana (Cuba)
The flight, crossing the Atlantic, covering 11,800 km, was one of the longest non-stop flights in the world at the time. The flight was operated with a Ilyushin Il-62.

🙂 Tiksi — North Pole — Dixon
A true Arctic route through a system of drifting scientific stations and polar bases. Antonov An-2, Il-14 were used, later An-12 and Il-18, which landed on ice.
Sometimes they carried mail, sometimes scientists, sometimes blocks of concrete. And all this in the conditions of the Arctic cold, where the temperature drops to 50 degrees below zero.

🙂 Moscow — Kandahar (Afghanistan)

The peculiarity of this flight was that it was carried out in the midst of the war in the 1980s.

🙂 Moscow — Laos/Vientiane

This long-range and rare flight to Southeast Asia was often served by Il-76 cargo-passenger planes.

🙂 Moscow — Maputo (Mozambique)

An example of how Aeroflot flew deep into Africa. Besides Mozambique, Aeroflot planes regularly flew to Guinea, Angola, and Ethiopia.

Sometimes the flights lasted two days with stops (Moscow — Tripoli — Lagos — Lusaka — Maputo).

🙂 Khabarovsk — Yuzhno-Kurilsk

An exotic flight with a Beriev Be-12 seaplane. When there were no runways, this made it possible to transport goods and passengers to remote islands.

Departure from Khabarovsk or Vladivostok, landing directly on the sea or on a lake.

🙂 Tashkent — Ürümqi (China)

One of the few Soviet-Chinese flights in the 1980s, against the backdrop of difficult relations. It was also used to transport equipment, machine tools, and specialists to restore contacts with western China. They flew Tu-134, sometimes Il-18.

🙂 Moscow — Pyongyang (DPRK)

Within the framework of Soviet-North Korean cooperation, engineers, military personnel, translators, and special service officials were transported.

🙂 Secret flights to Baikonur

Many flights to Kazakhstan (Baikonur, Priozersk, Zhezqazghan) were not listed in the schedules. In fact, they served the cosmodrome, test sites, and closed cities.

An-24, Il-62, Tu-154 were used, depending on the load and tasks.

🙂 Moscow — Mexico City

The flight from the Mexican capital to Moscow lasted 16 hours and 5 minutes and was operated with an Il-62. Along the route, the plane stopped in Frankfurt, Lisbon and Havana.