Flying is a tremendous adventure. I remember some of my first flights - the excitement of every detail from take-off to the flight attendant call button (or the whine of the flaps extending on an Avro RJ!), and the difference between aircraft types - trivialities such as the location of exits or the underfloor washroom complex on LH’s A340-600s. Some 1600 flights and millions of miles later, the excitement of flying yet another Boeing 737-800 or Airbus 320 has been tempered, if not entirely eliminated.
But I still love flying, and seek experiences that are unusual and certain to be memorable. Of course there’s also a fascination with “rare” aircraft types, and at this point, most of the remaining ones are old Soviet designs. I have tried twice to fly the Ilyushin 96 with Cubana - once ending up on an Air Europa 330 (last-minute charter) and the other time having to abandon Cubana altogether when they “delayed” my flight to the next day (instead flying Upper Class in the nose of a VS 747). I was lucky in Uzbekistan, as the Il-114 took me on my segment to Bukhara, before retiring unexpectedly a few months afterwards.
Another area for exploration of old Russian types is in Ukraine with Motor Sich. Affectionately called the “Motor Sich lottery”, on their routes (LWO/ODS-IEV-OZH-MSQ) you may fly an AN-24, AN-140, YK-40, or even an AN-72! Alas on my last “lottery” attempt, I flew the AN-24 three times - still a blast from the (Soviet) past.
Then, of course, is North Korea, a country that has long intrigued me for reasons beyond their aviation sphere, which is fascinating in its own right. Il-62, TU-204, Tu-154, Il-18, An-24, and so forth, are all actively flown there. I kept my September calendar year free one year in anticipation of being able to join one of the “Aviation Tours” that took place with regularity, flying around the whole country and experiencing these remarkable flying machines. Alas, that very year, the tour was rescheduled for October, so no North Korea.
Such is the excitement of chasing these old aircraft, you need some flexibility and a good dose of luck to be successful in your quest. But the reward! Oh, the reward…
When it came to my attention in April that the last Tupolev 134 in passenger service was scheduled for its final flights in May 2019, I knew I needed to take action quickly. The “final” rotations were scheduled for May 18 and 20, from Mirny to Irkutsk. My Russian geographic knowledge is not comprehensive enough to be able to pinpoint where Mirny, a diamond-mining city, is on a map, but Irkutsk indicated a location in deep dark Siberia. I enlisted a good friend to join me, let's call him
P. Neither of us are crazy or especially dedicated avgeeks, but we both enjoy a good adventure and especially spending time together. Mirny is renowned for having one of the “largest excavated holes in the world”, an open-pit diamond mine that was active from 1957 to 2001. Obviously an exciting place to visit!
Planning a trip is half the fun, especially when it poses some challenges. In this case, I would be able to fly the “final” flight on the 18th, but would need to be back in Europe proper on the 19th, which proved to be completely impossible, since there were no flights out of Mirny until the next rotation… on the 20th.
P started researching the Alrosa website (which happens to be only in Russian or Chinese: the former I can read, while the latter is of no help at all) and perusing the schedule of flights to see which combination would work the best. The last rotations may have been for May 18th and 20th but the Tupolev-134 was still scheduled for its regular duties in the preceding days, plying the routes to Novosibirsk and Yakutsk. Our plans were further complicated when we noted that Alrosa had once again scheduled flights on the Tupolev 154 after a five-month hiatus. Obviously, having flown all the way to Siberia, we could not leave without flying both the 134 and the 154.
First off, I had to procure a Russian visa. As many frequent travellers will attest to, one of the most annoying elements of travel to “exotic” countries is getting that precious piece of paper in your passport. The time, cost, and uncertainty in addition to parting with your passport and the inability to be absolutely certain of approval mean I avoid visas whenever practical. In particular, dealing with bureaucracy of the CIS states can be annoying and intimidating (though, to be fair, a part of the fun of going on these trips). I had been to Russia only once, for work and by official invitation from a ministry, and recall the process with my Canadian passport was incredibly expensive (FedEx envelopes both ways, visa fee of $150) and a persistent lack of information was frustrating. This time, I decided to apply in Europe with my European passport, and found the process significantly easier. It also helps that one can still travel - and cross borders - with only an EU ID card, reducing the pain of a missing passport. Going through the (nearly) mandatory VFS Global service it was all rather straight forward, though not without some kinks. I arrived a day before leaving Europe at 3:00 pm, the office closes at 4:00 pm according to the website. There was no line-up, I made sure to have two versions of my passport photo (of course they didn’t like the first one I showed them), and all insurance documents + invitation letter (purchased online for 10 EUR). But soon enough the lady wasn’t happy my insurance document listed coverage in Canadian Dollars not Euros (even though it is for a few million vs. the minimum 30,000 EUR) and that it didn’t specify it was valid for Russia (apparently “Worldwide” has a complex definition). I had to sprint to a shop to print out more pages from the policy to prove some terms, and was informed that - oh - they actually stop accepting applications at 3:30 pm, it’s listed on the door. You should come back tomorrow as we probably won’t be able to help you today. I was back at 3:25 pm, a grumpy Russian woman came out and was about to turn me away as I kindly explained I could not come back the next morning and received supervisor approval to be helped at 3:31 pm. Phew. Visa was ready as advertised, 7 business days later, and I had my uncle pick it up with a power of attorney letter from me. All-in-all cost - around 70 EUR.
So, now to plan the flights.
The first version of our itinerary was a simple Novosibirsk-Mirny-Novosibirsk turn, on the outbound a Tupolev 134 was scheduled and on the return a Tupolev 154.
P and I procrastinated a bit (something we both have in common) and didn’t book anything, and when I went to book it a few days later, the outbound flight was suddenly selling business class - a sign it was no longer a Tupolev 134, which is in an all-economy layout. Sure enough, the OVB-MJZ flight was now on a modern 737-800. Back to the drawing board.
The second version of our itinerary was a Yakutsk-Mirny-Novosibirsk connecting itinerary, with the first flight on the TU-134 and the second on the TU-154. After a week of procrastinating, I booked this combination. All good, the website accepted my card, I received multiple emails with confirmations, and I had great fun seeing this on an itinerary/eticket in 2019:
Alas (thankfully?)
P procrastinated and only tried to book the above flights a week later. I awoke one morning to a flurry of messages laced with expletives, eventually deciphering that Alrosa had subbed in an AN-24 for the Yakutsk-Mirny flight, not only taking the TU-134 out of the picture but wrecking this itinerary. Back, again, to the drawing board, now only two weeks before the flights. I also had the task of getting a refund for my broken itinerary, which I delegated to
P, as he speaks Russian. After emailing with no reply, he gave them a ring, and they told him to email… Eventually the proper department was reached and a refund hit my card only a few days later.
In the meantime, since booking the above and looking for the third itinerary, Alrosa had decided to completely redesign its website. In the past, there was a nice simple PDF with flight schedules; this was completely removed, replaced by a search box for timetables. Each segment had to be searched individually, and I had no luck finding where exactly the Tupolev had been moved to.
P eventually found it, flying to Polyarny. Now the trick was to figure out how we could combine Polyarny with the TU-154 (still scheduled on Mirny-Novosibirsk) and how we could get there from Moscow in the first place… Final itinerary OVB-MJZ-PYJ-MJZ-OVB. Two segments on TU-134, one on TU-154, and one B738.
BA Avios come in very handy for flights within Russia, and we were certainly glad that we didn’t have to book DME-YKS - a redeye 737-800 flight of 3,054 miles, just over the Avios band, and would cost a whopping 60,000 miles in business. We would still be taking an ultra-long B738 flight, OVB-FRA, a new once-weekly connection with flight time of around 7 hours which covers 2,992 miles, just under the next band and a more palatable 37,500 miles plus negligible taxes.
For the inbound to Russia, 17,000 miles LHR-DME for the BA 787-9 in Club World, off-peak and with the capped EU taxes - a great deal.
P would be flying in from Dusseldorf on S7, and we booked DME-OVB for 20,000 Avios again on S7.
We also booked a quick trip from Moscow to Izhevsk on the Izhavia Yak-42 - as the only remaining scheduled operator of the Yak-42, a chance too good to pass up.
The final itinerary looked as follows:
10,534 flown miles, 7 airports, and three Russian types, all in the space of four days. Adventure awaits.