YVR Cockroach

Something really weird like Gander (YQX) - Havana (HAV)?

jrl767

WHBM

I'll go for Havana to Mexico City.

joejones

Are you referring to SFO-ANC? I think that's not technically "fifth freedom" since they didn't have local traffic rights on that sector.

jlemon

1. Well, the Aeroflot flight in question did not serve Gander (or any other destination in Canada as a matter of fact)....but it did indeed serve Havana (HAV) so you are on the right track here.

jlemon

5. Nope! And in fact the two LH flights in question did not serve any destinations in the continental U.S. or in Mexico.

jlemon

1. As noted above, this Aeroflot flight did indeed serve Havana (HAV). However, it did not serve any destination in Mexico.

jlemon

1. Nope! I think Aeroflot may have been lucky just to have permission to carry conditional stopover traffc between two U.S. points.

As I just noted above in a couple of responses, this Aeroflot flight was operated between Havana (HAV) and a destination in another country. And the destination in question was not located in the U.S., Mexico or Canada.

joejones

Ah, this must be it: HAV-KIN. One of several Havana tags they operated back in the day.

WHBM

OK. Havana to Kingston, Jamaica.

jlemon

I see we have two responses above to the Aeroflot fifth freedom quiz item from both joejones and WHBM.....

And as Seat 2A might say....."Ya Mon!"

Here are the scheds....

SU 339: Havana (HAV) 6:00p - 7:40p Kingston (KIN)
Freq: Mondays only
Equip: IL6
Service classes: C/Y

SU 340: Kingston (KIN) 9:20p - 11:00p Havana (HAV)
Freq: Mondays only
Equip: IL6
Service classes: C/Y

The complete round trip routing for this Aeroflot service was SVO - SNN - HAV - KIN.

jlemon

Let's include a hint that applies to both of these...

The above flights operated by COPA and Lufthansa did not serve destinations located in the continental U.S., Canada or Mexico. Thus, these CM and LH flights operated in the Caribbean.

And I'll have some fifth freedom quiz items from 1976 as a follow-on after we receive correct answers for the above....

WHBM

Actually Gander may well have got a look in on this flight as well, especially westbound, just not scheduled or advertised. The IL-62M was very marginal on such a distance. Among other things Aeroflot were renowned at Shannon westbound for using every inch of the runway, just lifting off at the very end and then running level and low for maybe 30 seconds until speed built up a bit more. I have to say, they never had an accident with these very lengthy Atlantic routes. If things looked to be getting close they could always drop in at Bermuda or Nassau.

Shannon was a general stop for all Cubana, Aeroflot and Eastern Bloc carriers. The Soviets made an arrangement in the late 1960s to build a tank farm at Shannon, and a tanker sailed round periodically from the Black Sea into the Shannon estuary with a load of Soviet aviation fuel, which saved them all foreign currency. After an initial period of doubt, the Irish authorities found it was completely up to standard spec for quality, and the Soviets were then permitted to sell it on the open market. Ireland has no domestic oil supply, of course, all is imported, so they didn't mind. Of course, the Soviets (and more recently Russians) priced it just a bit below other oil companies, so scooped all the business - and the substantial foreign currency.

The most surprising flights were by the Cubana Antonov 24s, similar in size and scope to a Fokker F.27, which needed to go back to the factory in Kiev (nowadays in Ukraine) about every 3 years for major overhaul. They had a range when empty of about 1,500 miles. They routed from Havana via (apuse for breath) Nassau, Bermuda, Yarmouth Nova Scotia, Goose Bay, Narsarsuaq in Greenland, Keflavik, Shannon and Prague. same crew throughout, probably took a week, must have been a wild trip in winter. The work seemed to take months with Soviet aircraft, so the crew brought back the previous one, fully overhauled. Went on like this for years. Cubana had no credit at these intermediate points so the captain was given a big stash of US dollars to pay for fuel in cash. Their predecessors, lyushin 14s, about the size of a Convair 440 piston aircraft, had the engines and wings taken off at Havana, were taken down to the docks, and loaded as deck cargo on freighters back to Leningrad for the same periodic work.

YVR Cockroach

1993 was after the fall of the Iron Curtain IIRC so SU might have curtailed scheduled flights (including the YQX-HAV route) to there at that time. In the '80s, Gander was a scheduled stopover and received defectors from both behind the Iron Curtain and Cuba.. A NYT article in 1985 put the number of defectors at 96 or 1984, and just 16 in 1979. A Canadian news magazine put it at 208 in 1988, 500 in 1989, and 1,140 in the 1st 2 1/2 months of 1990.

Influx from the East | Maclean's | MARCH 19, 1990

jlemon

Speaking of the Antonov 24, Cubana was operating this aircraft type between Havana and Kingston in the fall of 1994. Here are the scheds....

CU 456: Havana (HAV) 6:45a - 9:00a Kingston (KIN)
Freq: Wednesdays and Saturdays only
Equip: AN4
Service class: Y

CU 457: Kingston (KIN) 10:00a - 1:15p Havana (HAV)
Freq: Wednesdays and Saturdays only
Equip: AN4
Service class: Y

Aeroflot and Cubana were the only two air carriers flying between Havana and Kingston at this time with a combined total of three flights a week.