Commenced operations | September 1, 1930 |
---|---|
Ceased operations | January 3, 1960 (absorbed into Aeroflot) |
Operating bases | |
Fleet size | See Fleet below |
Headquarters |
|
Key people | Mark Shevelev |
Aviaarktika was a Soviet airline which started operations on 1 September 1930 and was absorbed by Aeroflot on 3 January 1960.
Aviaarktika was the flying branch of the Department of Polar Aviation of Glavsevmorput. Its first head was Mark Shevelev and it was originally based in Krasnoyarsk. It moved to Moscow in 1932.
Aviarktika established routes along the rivers and lakes of Siberia and Northern Russia; the Ob River with a base at Omsk, on the Irtysh and Yenisei rivers, with a base at Krasnoyarsk, on the Angara near Lake Baikal at Irkutsk, and at Yakutsk on the Lena.
Initially Aviaarktika flew the Junkers F.13 floatplane and six Dornier Wal flying boats. By 1933 there were 42 aircraft including Tupolev ANT-4 and ANT-6's.
AVIAARKTIKA Tupolev ANT-4, CCCP-H317, currently located at the Ulyanovsk Aircraft Museum in Ulyanovsk Baratayevka Airport (Central) (UWLL), is the only surviving example of the ANT-4. CCCP-H317 crash-landed in Siberian tundra in 1944 and was recovered 39 years later and restored for the museum. [1]
The Tupolev Tu-104 is a retired twinjet, medium-range, narrow-body turbojet-powered Soviet airliner. It was the second to enter regular service, behind the British de Havilland Comet, and was the only jetliner operating in the world from 1956 to 1958, when the British jetliner was grounded due to safety concerns.
Aeroflot Flight 5143 was a domestic scheduled Karshi–Ufa–Leningrad passenger flight that crashed near Uchkuduk, Uzbek SSR, Soviet Union, on 10 July 1985. The crash killed all 200 occupants on board. Investigators determined that crew fatigue was a factor in the accident.
Founded in 1923, Aeroflot, the flag carrier and largest airline of Russia, has had a high number of fatal crashes, with a total of 8,231 passengers dying in Aeroflot crashes according to the Aircraft Crashes Record Office, mostly during the Soviet-era, about five times more than any other airline. From 1946 to 1989, the carrier was involved in 721 incidents. From 1995 to 2017, the carrier was involved in 10 incidents. In 2013, AirlineRatings.com reported that five of the ten aircraft models involved in the highest numbers of fatal accidents were old Soviet models.
Aeroflot, the Soviet Union's national carrier, experienced a number of serious accidents and incidents during the 1970s. The airline's worst accident during the decade took place in August 1979, when two Tupolev Tu-134s were involved in a mid-air collision over the Ukrainian city then named Dniprodzerzhinsk, with the loss of 178 lives. Including this event, there were nine deadly incidents with more than 100 fatalities, while the total recorded number of casualties was 3,541 for the decade.
Following is a list of accidents and incidents experienced by Aeroflot during the 1980s. The deadliest accident the carrier experienced in this decade occurred in July 1985, when Flight 7425, a Tupolev Tu-154B-2, stalled en route and crashed near Uchkuduk, then located in the Uzbek SSR, claiming the lives of all 200 occupants aboard the aircraft. The second deadliest accident the company went through in the decade took place in October 1984, when Flight 3352, a Tupolev Tu-154B-1, hit snowploughs upon landing at Omsk Airport, killing 174 of 179 people on board plus four people on the ground. Both accidents combined left a death toll of 378 casualties and involved a Tupolev Tu-154, ranking as the worst ones involving the type, as of February 2012.
Following is a list of accidents and incidents Aeroflot experienced in the 1960s. The deadliest event the Soviet Union's flag carrier went through in the decade occurred in November 1967, when an Ilyushin Il-18V crashed upside down shortly after takeoff from Koltsovo Airport in Sverdlovsk, then located in the Russian SSR, killing all 107 occupants on board, prompting the temporary grounding of the type within the airline's fleet. In terms of fatalities, the accident ranks as the fifth worst involving an Il-18, as of April 2016. Another aircraft of the type was involved in the second deadliest accident the airline experienced in the decade, this time in September 1964, when 87 people were killed when the aircraft struck a hillside on approach to Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk. The decade was also marked by the only deadly accident experienced by a Tupolev Tu-114, which entered commercial service on the Moscow–Khabarovsk route in April 1961.
After the dissolution of the Soviet Union in December 1991, its former republics started establishing their own carriers from the corresponding directorates Aeroflot had at these countries, causing the airline to shrink drastically. The fleet reduced from several thousand aircraft to a number slightly over 100 in 1993, helping the former Soviet Union's national airline to improve its accidents and incidents record sharply. The company experienced 42 events between 1990 and 1991 only, and had 41 occurrences in the rest of the decade. Despite this, the three deadliest accidents the airline went through in the decade occurred in the post-Soviet era, leaving a death toll of 257, each one involving more than 50 fatalities.
Following is a list of accidents and incidents Aeroflot experienced in the 1950s. The deadliest event the Soviet Union's flag carrier went through in the decade occurred in October 1958, when a Tupolev Tu-104 crashed en route to Sverdlovsk, then located in the Russian SSR, killing all 80 occupants on board. In terms of fatalities, the accident ranks as the eighth worst accident involving a Tu-104, as of July 2016. Another aircraft of the type was involved in the second deadliest accident the airline experienced in the decade, this time in August 1958, when 64 people were killed when the aircraft crashed near Chita after entering an updraft. The Tu-104's tail was modified and the service ceiling lowered in the wake of these two accidents.
On 27 April 1974, an Aeroflot Il-18 airliner crashed while operating a charter flight from Leningrad to Zaporizhzhia, continuing to Krasnodar, Russia. The plane crashed shortly after takeoff from Pulkovo Airport in Leningrad. None of the 109 people on board survived. An engine fire had been caused by a faulty compressor disk.
On Sunday 3 August 1969 an Antonov An-24 operating Aeroflot Flight N-826 crashed resulting in the death of all 55 people on board. An investigation revealed the cause of the accident was an in flight failure of the propeller attached to "No. 1" (left) engine.