Ghost Airport in the Komi Republic

In one remote village, in the Komi Republic, there is an old abandoned airport. He hasn’t been taking planes for a long time, he rarely, rarely takes a helicopter, and as long as there is a person who monitors the status of the runway ... True, there is no longer a runway as such, only a helipad.

Once upon a time small planes flew here, which cruised inside the Republic, transporting shift workers and people in the Arctic. Once this airport lived its life, breathed, saw many stories of meetings and partings.

And now the building is decaying, deteriorating, the heating is not working, the walls are getting damp, and someday the airport will completely go into oblivion. But the airport is alive, while someone takes care of it, while someone walks within its walls, supports life, while someone talks to it. After all, the airport is a living organism. With his life support system, with his view of the world, with his memories ...

And let's go the way of the passenger of the past ... That time when the airport was young and full of energy. When he greeted every passenger in his walls and rejoiced in every new day.

Summer. A young man with a suitcase, probably a shift worker, enters the airport building. He needs to fly to work. He's watching the schedule ...

He goes to the ticket office, buys a ticket, and because there is still some time before departure, throws the suitcase into the left-luggage office and goes for a walk around the airport.

Probably, many people have nothing to do with love to read all sorts of ads on the walls, some instructions. And our young man is no exception. What do we have here? And here is a simple set of services discharged from OST 54-1-283.02-94. There are no commercial offers here, everything is breathing in the meantime, when the passenger was taken care of, and not unnecessary services were driven into it. And what can be sold here, the airport is small, more, as it seems to me, transit.

Here you can read an extract from the Criminal Code, the rights of an air passenger in Russia. Some behavior instructions on board an aircraft.

A young man is standing in thought in front of the phone ... Whether to call his girlfriend or postpone the conversation until returning from a business trip, because they quarreled before he left. It's hard to leave and not see each other for a month. Moreover, then there were no mobile phones and the Internet.

But now announce the registration for the flight, it's time. And our hero is in a hurry to check in and check in his luggage.

There is still some time before boarding the plane, and you can watch TV. But our young man is curious, and now he is already heading to the dispatcher’s room.

Here you can see the scheme of flights of aircraft in different directions. As you can see, the map shows the points of the deposits where the shift workers go to work and where the hero of our story from the past is flying away.

Old walkie talkie. She, of course, is old, but still working, and with her help 82 human lives were once saved. These walls are remembered by everyone.

You can get to the airfield, or rather, now to the heliport, in such a roundabout way. This is an entry for special vehicles, for official vehicles. On the territory there are hangars, outbuildings for inventory and equipment that are used in the airport. Yes, the airport, although it has ceased its main activity, is maintained by a single person in a more or less working condition.

A look at the terminal building from the airfield and farewell until the next meeting.

And this is the hero of our time, the man who saved the TU-154 airliner and 82 lives. Sergey Mikhailovich Sotnikov. When the airliner refused all electrical appliances, when the fuel pumps stopped working and the plane had to fly for half an hour, the pilots were looking for a landing place. And suddenly they saw a runway, albeit a short one for such a large airliner, but still it was a chance to survive.

And they survived. Having landed on the runway, the plane swept through the forest for several meters, taking down bushes and trees on its way. And it’s good that the trees were frail, characteristic of that area, otherwise a catastrophe could not have been avoided.

And since the plane was almost not injured, the passengers and crew survived, and all thanks to the skill of the pilots and the man who kept the airfield in order all eight years before this event.

I won’t retell this story for the thousandth time, all the more so on the Internet you can find the stories of eyewitnesses themselves and journalists who worked directly at the scene of the accident, but I want to thank Sergey Mikhailovich for his work. After all, each of us could and could be in the place of those passengers.

And the airport is still standing, still living. And he will live while Sergey Mikhailovich goes to work every day, will take care of this small but necessary airfield. And if he leaves, will the airport all cease to exist? Will they forget about him?