An atypical event has taken place at the Odessa international airport: an An-148 airplane has performed two sets of takeoffs and landings on a reserve dirt runway. The press service of the Odessa international airport announced this in a statement.
The performance of the extreme flights was organized with the aim of shooting a video demonstrating the capabilities of the An-148 under various operating conditions. The video was ordered by the Antonov state aircraft manufacturing enterprise, and the shooting of the video was organized by the Ilyushin Finance leasing company, which is Antonov’s sales partner for the An-148.
The Odessa airport was selected as the location for the video shoot because it is the only airport in Ukraine where a dirt runway with a length sufficient for the An-148 survives in working condition (it is adjacent to the main runway). Certification tests of this type of aircraft took place here in 2007.
For the video shoot, three cameras were installed on the ground and eight on the aircraft itself (its undercarriage, tail, nose, wings, and cockpit).
"Pilots preparing for the departure of a flight by a Turkish airline company witnessed the skills of Ukrainian pilots at the Odessa airport: the heavy Ukrainian machine landed smoothly on the ground next to the runway in front of the astonished foreigners, leaving behind only a small cloud of dust. The airplane performed a second flight after an inspection of by technicians and replacement of the memory cards in the cameras," the statement said.
See the video of the flight
