Smolensk North Airport (, "Smolensk North Military Aerodrome") is a decommissioned

military airbase An airbase (stylised air base in American English), sometimes referred to as a military airbase, military airfield, military airport, air station, naval air station, air force station, or air force base, is an aerodrome or airport used as a mi ...

Smolensk Oblast Smolensk Oblast (), informally also called Smolenshchina (), is a federal subjects of Russia, federal subject of Russia (an oblast). Its administrative centre is the types of inhabited localities in Russia, city of Smolensk. As of the 2021 Russ ...

Russia Russia, or the Russian Federation, is a country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia. It is the list of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the world, and extends across Time in Russia, eleven time zones, sharing Borders ...

, located 4 km north of the city of

Smolensk Smolensk is a city and the administrative center of Smolensk Oblast, Russia, located on the Dnieper River, west-southwest of Moscow. First mentioned in 863, it is one of the oldest cities in Russia. It has been a regional capital for most of ...

. It is now used as Smolensk's sole airport for civil and military flights. It has a remote

revetment A revetment in stream restoration, river engineering or coastal engineering is a facing of impact-resistant material (such as stone, concrete, sandbags, or wooden piles) applied to a bank or wall in order to absorb the energy of incoming water an ...

area with 8 pads and a

Yakovlev The Joint-stock company, JSC A.S. Yakovlev Design Bureau () is a Russian aircraft designer and manufacturer (design office prefix Yak). Its head office is in Aeroport District, Northern Administrative Okrug, Moscow. It is a subsidiary of Yakovle ...

factory at the southeast side of the airfield, the Smolensk Aviation Plant.

History

The military air base was originally built in the 1920s by the

Soviet Union The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

, and it eventually became a class 1 airfield with a runway 2500 m long and 49 m wide, capable of handling planes over 75 tons in weight. Prior to 1991, it was home to the 401 IAP (401st Interceptor Aviation Regiment, disbanded around 1990), flying

MiG-23 The Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-23 (; NATO reporting name: Flogger) is a variable-geometry fighter aircraft, designed by the Mikoyan-Gurevich design bureau in the Soviet Union. It is a third-generation jet fighter, alongside similar Soviet aircra ...

P aircraft, and the 871 IAP, flying MiG-23 and Su-27. From 1946 until 2009, the base hosted an airlift unit, the 103 Gv VTAP (''103rd Guards Military Air Transport Regiment'', full name in Russian: ), flying

Ilyushin Il-76 The Ilyushin Il-76 (; NATO reporting name: Candid) is a multi-purpose, fixed-wing, four-engine turbofan strategic airlifter designed by the Soviet Union's Ilyushin design bureau as a commercial freighter in 1967, to replace the Antonov An-1 ...

jets. At one point, about 28 Il-76 aircraft were based there. The Russian Air Force regiment was disbanded in late 2009, and until 2010, there were no active units at the base except for a small airbase command post. The airfield has been functioning in part as a civilian airport since October 2009. On August 15, 2014, by order of the Government of the Russian Federation, the airfield was transferred from the state to the experimental one and under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Industry and Trade of the Russian Federation. (In fact, the transfer of the airfield began in 2019). Soviet-built radar in Azerbaijani

Accidents and incidents

A Polish government Tu-154M Lux carrying

President President most commonly refers to: *President (corporate title) * President (education), a leader of a college or university *President (government title) President may also refer to: Arts and entertainment Film and television *'' Præsident ...

Lech Kaczyński Lech Aleksander Kaczyński (; 18 June 194910 April 2010) was a Polish politician who served as the city mayor of Warsaw from 2002 until 2005, and as President of Poland from 2005 until his death in 2010 in an air crash. The aircraft carrying ...

, his wife, and an official delegation crashed during the final approach to the airport on 10 April 2010. All 96 aboard perished.Golloher, Jessica (10 April 2010)
Polish President, 95 Others Killed in Plane Crash
, '' VOA News'', 10 April 2010, Retrieved April 10, 2010

References

External links

History of the 103rd Guards Military Transport Aviation Regiment
accessed 7 June 2010 {{authority control Soviet Military Transport Aviation

Air base An airbase (stylised air base in American English), sometimes referred to as a military airbase, military airfield, military airport, air station, naval air station, air force station, or air force base, is an aerodrome or airport used as a mi ...

Soviet Air Defence Force bases Russian Air Force bases Smolensk air disaster Airports in Smolensk Oblast