U.S. Media Coverage - Russian Air Corridor

Posted Monday, August 19, 2002

1. Channel 2 KTUU Interview, April 30, 2003
2. Anchorage Daily News, August 11, 2002
3. Nome Nugget, August 30, 2001
4. Nome Nugget, August 2, 2001

KTUU, April 20, 2003   Top Small planes can fly from Nome to Provideniya in about two and a half hours
by Jeffrey Hope

Anchorage, Alaska, April 30 - Beginning this week, you can now legally fly a small plane all the way to Russia. The new route, from Nome to Provideniya, is the result of several years of planning.
For some, the route will mean new adventures.
"As far as just enjoying to fly, I think it's as much the view you get," says Marshall Severson, at the controls of his plane as he looks down on the city and its ring of mountains.
At least once a week, you'll find Severson somewhere over Anchorage in his plane, either by himself or with his wife and kids. He hopes to be one of the first families to fly their own plane from Alaska to the Russian Far East -- a route that just became possible Wednesday.
"We've adopted children from Russia and it's very important to us to be able to have those kind of links, the freedom of movement back and forth, from that perspective, too," he says. "So it means a lot to us."
The new route begins in Alaska and, in a plane like Severson's, would take about two and a half hours to fly directly to Provideniya. Pilots start in Nome, flying northwest along Alaska's coast, over Tin City and Wales, then turn west over the Bering Strait. That's where they check in with Russian officials, cross the international border and head to Keyekan. From there, it's a southwest flight to Provideniya.
It sounds pretty easy, but getting the two countries to work out the details was not.
"There's been periods of frustration, with periods of joy in there, and then you go back to periods of frustration," says Brian Staurseth of the Federal Aviation Administration's Alaska Region. "But, overall, it's been a pretty enjoyable project to work in."
FAA officials hope to eventually extend the route to as far as Magadan and maybe Japan.
A drastic cutback in Russia's military force in Provodeniya has left the city struggling to get by. It's not the type of place tourists will flock to, but some pilots are already asking about it. The Alaska Airmen's Association helped negotiate the new route.
"People are always asking if they can explore a little bit further," says Felix Maguire of the association. "There's a little mystique about flying to Alaska, but a little more mystique about flying to the Russian Far East. So we anticipate that people who come to Alaska would like to go over there, too."
If a private pilot had tried to fly this route before today, he could pretty much expect an escort back to the ground from either a U.S. F-15 or a Russian MIG. Now, now all it takes is a little paperwork, which takes about five days to get, and $150 for user fees for the Russian side.
As far as this pilot is concerned, that's not much to pay for a great adventure.
"You know, there's no boundaries anymore," says Severson. "We can get there. It's a good thing."
Commercial traffic to the Russian Far East started in the early 1990s. The new small plane route can only be flown in good weather with up to three miles visibility. For more information, contact the Alaska Airmen's Association.

Anchorage Daily News, August 11, 2002   Top Pilots fly new, short route to Russia, find hard times have hit Provideniya
By Zaz Hollander

Anchorage Daily News
(Published: August 11, 2002)

Seven Alaskans who flew to Provideniya Bay from Nome last weekend celebrated a new air route they've created but shivered at the desolation of post-communist Russia.

The aviators last Sunday made only the second official flight in a small plane on the new route from Nome to Provideniya. A test flight last year was the first.

Sunday's journey marked the successful end to years of negotiations between the United States and Russia to open a safe coastal route for small planes.

The route hinged on the Russians' creating a 10-kilometer-wide civilian air corridor across the restricted military airspace that blankets their skies. The new air path crosses only 39 nautical miles of open water, compared with a previous route farther south that crossed 206 miles of the Bering Sea.

Pilots and passengers in three planes made the 275-nautical-mile trip last weekend: a Cessna 172G, a Cessna 210 and a PA 30 Comanche.

Light winds and clear skies with 65-degree temperatures smiled on the aviators. The route followed the shortest distance between Alaska and Russia, a path over Big and Little Diomede islands.

"From the American side we could see Russia. You know, it was right there. It was too cool," said Marshall Severson, a member of the Alaska Airmen's Association who piloted the 172.

Felix Maguire, a longtime local aviator who rode in the 172G, also flew to Provideniya on an earlier trip in 1986 that reunited more than 100 Alaska Natives with relatives in Russia.

The emotional visit left Maguire with fond memories of the Chukotka province village of 8,000.

Those memories died last weekend.

"This is the depressing part. This is downtown," he said last week. The eerie quiet of a ghost town showed in a group of photographs on a table in front of him: The town center, a community hall, boarded up and deserted. A woman sitting with her baby in the town's "park" -- a patch of bare ground and a skeletal swing set. The downtown coal plant that provides central heating for the town. A statue of Vladimir Lenin, leader of the communist revolution in 1917.

Maguire noticed the town cemetery was full of crosses, though it had been empty in 1986. The mayor explained about the rash of suicides in the 1990s.

The town population has dropped to fewer than 1,000.

"The sadness of economic collapse -- I didn't expect that," Maguire said. "That's a side of going from communism to capitalism we don't see here."

Town fathers hope to rejuvenate Provideniya through tourism. Native dancers entertained the pilots during their four-hour stay. They were greeted with offerings of bread and salt and certificates marking the success of the voyage.

Then the Americans got back in their planes and flew home. They celebrated with champagne upon arriving in Nome last Sunday night.

The air route they established sets the groundwork for a longer corridor to Magadan, Anchorage's sister city. It's hoped the Japanese government will take similar steps to establish a corridor from Japan to Magadan.

The route will open to general aviation after it is reviewed by U.S. and Russian authorities. A procedural manual detailing the requirements for documentation and permission is being completed by the Airmen's Association. It is available at www.alaskaairmen.com.

Reporter Zaz Hollander can be reached at zhollander@adn.com or 907 257-4591.

Marshall Severson with Mr. Maguire

Seven Alaskans, including Felix Maguire, left, and Marshall Severson, made the second-ever official trip by small plane from Nome to Provideniya last Sunday. The flight marked the successful end of years of negotiations between the United States and Russia to open a safe, new coastal route for small-plane pilots. (Photo by Evan R. Steinhauser / Anchorage Daily News)

Route Plotted on Map

Felix Maguire points out the route he and six others flew on a recent flight to Provideniya, Russia. Pilots and passengers in three planes made the 275-nautical-mile trip last weekend. (Photo by Bradly J. Boner / Anchorage Daily News)

Air Route Briefing

The air route that Felix Maguire and other Alaska aviators established last week sets the groundwork for a longer corridor to Magadan, Anchorage's sister city, and possibly to Japan. (Photo by Bradly J. Boner / Anchorage Daily News)

Nome Nugget, August 30, 2001   Top By Anne Millbrooke

The Alaska Airmen's Association cooperated with U.S. Federal Aviation Administration and the Russian State Civil Aviation Authority to arrange the inaugural flight test of a visual flight rules (VFR) route between Nome and Provideniya. This test flight is to demonstrate use of the route, test systems of the two countries, the internal systems as well as the international procedures, and produce guidelines based on the experience. Opening the border to general aviation is the goal. Until now private planes had to carry a Russian navigator and fly directly across the Bering Sea. After several years of development, the new route is longer and safer. It does not require a Russian navigator be on board.

The new 270-nautical-mile route follows the coasts from Nome north to Wales, across the Bering Strait just south of the Diomede Islands, to Pouten on the Siberian coast, down the coast past Lavrentiya, to Provideniya, and the reverse. The longest stretch over water is 40 miles.

By the end of the year, if plans become reality, the VFR route will be open. The 1988 Friendship Flight, charter operations of Bering Air and other airlines, and Christian missionary pilots have flown between Alaska and Chukotka. Years of negotiation have been necessary to enable private planes to fly into Russia, because, in part, aviation in Russia is controlled — controlled by air traffic controllers on the ground. By definition, instrument flight is controlled.

The striking feature of this new route is the VFR capability to fly free of ground control in meteorological conditions that permit navigation by visual contact with the ground and other aircraft in the air. General aviation involving private planes flying at the will of the pilot, under visual flight rules, is unknown within Russia. This Nome-to-Provideniya route will be the first general aviation route to Russia, and it will be a corridor rather than the wide open spaces familiar to Alaskan pilots.

The inaugural flight over the new route was scheduled for Saturday, August 25. Pilots and crew gathered for a telephone briefing the preceding Wednesday. They gathered again in Nome Friday evening. Two planes of the ten planes canceled due to weather en route to Nome. A Super Cub from southern Oregon flew as far as Palmer, Alaska, before turning back. The other cancellation was a Cessna 182 out of Anchorage. Nine planes arrived in Nome Friday, but two approached after fog blew over the airport. A Cherokee 235 with three people on board landed at Basin Creek. These were crew for one of the eight planes going to Russia. A twin-engine Grumman Hu-16 Albatross amphibian circled the Nome airport for a while, but the fog did not blow out.

The highlight of the trip would be Terry Smith's smooth landing of the large amphibian on the gravel runway at Basin Creek, commented aviation insurance underwriter and private pilot Douglas L. Bosworth of Seattle. He was in one of the 14 seats on that aircraft, which is over 62 feet in length and has a wingspan of over 96 feet.

As of Friday night, the final permission from Russia, permission for the international flight into Russia, had not yet been received. Flight director Felix Maguire gave the pre-flight briefing anyway. Katherine Madison and Val Larson of the Nome Flight Service Station (FSS) described the support available on this side of the border.

Maguire reviewed the route, the radio frequencies, the border crossing procedures, the approach to Provideniya, the airfield there, and refueling arrangements. Capable of carrying 675 gallons of fuel in the wing tanks, the Albatross would be able to carry enough fuel for the other planes to refuel from it in Provideniya. The Albatross would also land and pick up people should any plane go down into the water.

Maguire discussed international flight plans to be filed in Russia for the return trip and the flight back to Nome.

He distributed conversion tables showing inches to millibars for barometric data, feet to meters to feet for altitude, nautical miles to kilometers for distance, knots to meters per second for wind. One lucky pilot had a GPS (global positioning system) capable of automatically switiching between measurement systems.

Approach and landing in Russia uses the QFE value, height above touchdown or height above airport in terms of the atmospheric pressure at the local station. That means, in Russia, the altimeter should read zero upon landing. In the United States pilots use the altitude above sea level of the runway. In talking with Russia air traffic controllers, the pilots would need to be aware of such differences.

Rescue and fire fighting vehicles, equipment, and personnel will be on the airfield to greet each landing plane, Maguire explained. That is standard in Russia. Everyone paid attention, because a test flight is work. There would be no passengers on the planes. Everyone in every plane had a job to do, whether as co-pilot, flight engineer, navigator, mechanic or assistant.

About midnight the party turned in. Sleep is important before flying, and this flight would require a lot of extra attention and effort from the pilots and crew. They went to bed ready to fly the next day.

Saturday morning the airmen and women checked in at 7 a.m. and checked in again at noon. No permission.

The delay was frustrating, yet somewhat understandable given the several Russian agencies involved in the process, including Customs (State Customs Committee), Immigration (Ministry of Foreign Affairs), Health (State Committee of Sanitary and Epidemiological Surveillance), Aeronautical Fees (Commussion for Air Traffic Regulation), and even Protocol.

People scattered about town and on the road system to kill time and to see the sights, including the Last Train to No Where, Council, Pilgrims Hot Springs and musk oxen along the Teller highway. That night, as they stood around a bonfire on the beach east of town, they talked about flying to Russia.

Sunny Sunday provided good sightseeing for the frustrated party, still stranded by the lack of permission. One pilot had to take her Cessna 170 back to Fairbanks and other responsibilities. Terri and Terry Smith moved their Albatross from Basin Creek to the Nome airport. Marshall Severson flew his 172 to Wales to check out the route that far.

"It was clear. I could see Russia on the other side, and I just wanted to fly across right then," Severson recalled after returning to Nome.

Seven planes remained in the inaugural flight. The new flight order would be Ed Maynard in his twin-engine PA-30 Twin Comanche, Todd Bureau in his twin Cessna 210, Arthur Hussey in a Cessna 182, Dave Shields in a 182, Marshall Severson in a 172, Bob Burcham in a 180 and Terry Smith in the large Albatross. But planes, pilots, and crew went to bed late Sunday night not knowing whether the needed permission would be in hand Monday morning.

Seven a.m. was decision time, as 7 a.m. in Alaska is 7 p.m. in Moscow. By then, the bureaucrat or bureaucrats in Moscow who could issue the permission would have left their offices for the day.

To avoid time confusion, the entire flight would use the aviation standard Zulu. This is coordinated universal time (UTC, in the international abbreviation based on the French), which is Greenwich mean time (GMT) mdash; the time (based on a 24-hour clock) in Greenwich, England. At 7 a.m. Alaska time or 7 p.m. Moscow time, Zulu is 3:00. While Alaska, Moscow and London use daylight savings time, Zulu does not.

But would there be a flight?

The Alaska Airmen had the invitation from Gennady Baiborodov, General Director of Chukot AVIA Airlines. The State Department had helped get visas for each participant. Only the permission number, which is necessary to file an international flight plan for Russia, was missing. The request for that number had been submitted in a timely manner, but thus far there was no response to the request.

Brian E. Staurseth of the FAA had been working with the Russians since 1991 and with the Alaska Airmen's Association on this specific project. He was not in Nome, but he was hoping the flight would happen. Maguire, director of this inaugural flight and past president of the Alaska Airmen,
was here, and he wanted to go to Provideniya! Dee Hanson, executive director of the Alaska Airmen, and Betsy Torres, administrative officer, had helped organize the association's sponsorship of this flight. They too were in Nome and they wanted to fly to Provideniya. Torres had finished the 1985 Iditarod dog sled race second among the female mushers and 29th among the race finishers. About midnight Sunday, Maguire sent one final fax to Russia.

Please, Mr. Vitality K. Paviluk, Director of International Relations, State Civil Aviation Authority, Ministry of Transport, Russian Federation, please send the permission to proceed.

Then everyone tried to sleep, while we waited.

Seven a.m. came, but no fax, no word from Russia, no permission.

"The sad thing is the people in Chukotka — the governor, the civil aviation authorities, the people — wanted this to happen," said Maguire. The flight group blamed some unnamed, unknown bureaucrat in Moscow. Maguire added, "We can write up a rather extensive report that includes how-to and how-not-to tips. We did the best we could. We made a good attempt. We learned basic lessons." This attempt ended in Nome, but as a group the Alaska airmen and women agreed with Maguire's conclusion: "I think it will probably happen. "

No one said when.

Nome Nugget, August 2, 2001   Top By Anne Millbrooke

The first step toward private planes flying between the Russian Far East and Alaska is a visual-flight-rules (VFR) air route between Nome and Provideniya, according to Vitaliy Shaposhnikov of the Russian Office of Flight Standards in Magadan.

Shaposhnikov, Vladimir Vakhrouchev of Anadyr, and a third Civil Aviation official visited Nome last week to establish the Nome-Provideniya air route. In conjunction with the Nome Flight Service Station, they tested radio and telephone communications between the Russian airports in Anadyr and Provideniya and the Alaskan flight service stations in Nome and Anchorage.

The Russian officials knew Captain Yakov Sabodin, who was in Nome with the Brazilian powered-glider Ximango. The Ximango was going from Nome to Russia, under current visual flight rules and with Sabodin as a Russian navigator on board. "At present, VFR flights are obliged to proceed directly out across the dangerously-icy Bering Sea instead of easily following a slightly longer but safer route in sight of land all the way," said the Ximango's Brazilian pilot, Gérard Moss.

The Alaska Airmen's Association plans to test and inaugurate the operation of the new VFR corridor next month, on August 25. August 26 is the alternate date should weather on the 25th not permit VFR flights. As approved by the Russian Civil Aviation Authority and the US Federal Aviation Administration, the Airmen's Association will send three groups of private airplanes to Provideniya and back. The route from Nome will go to Wales, cross the Bering Strait south of the Diomede Islands, reach Puoten, turn south, fly past Lavrentiya and Lorino, and land at Provideniya. The 270-nautical mile route has 40 miles as its longest stretch over water.