Tupolev Aircraft Company

So an airshow in North Korea.

How did how on earth did that come about? What on earth led to that happening? Well, actually some people may know going into the airshow 2016 um for many years they'd actually been doing aviation tour well to to start a little bit broader than that people think how on earth do you go to north korea in the first place well there were ways to visit as a tourist um you could also visit so educational things obviously some limited business maybe but you could visit as a tourist they had a tourist ability or capability sorts of options for the country it was a very really good way of bringing in foreign exchange which was very rare and very very valuable to them to have actual foreign currency coming into the country and one of those tourist things that happened tourist activities was aviation tours run by a few different companies i think but primarily by actually british company called juche travel services And what these tours often were, they involved the Air Koryo, the state and only airline of the country, Air Koryo, national airline, which maintained pretty much exclusively a fleet of old Soviet airliners, Ilyushins, Tupolevs, Antonovs.

And those tours, you could fly on them, you could take pictures of them, didn't often involve the entire fleet i don't think but you you got good you know exposure to quite a lot of those those airliners and that was something i'd already be looking at i'd already been i'd seen people who'd been on them before and i was already starting to think well you know i wasn't back then i wasn't massively into airliners per se but old soviet airliners you know who who doesn't like those and i was already looking at doing these tours or considering one of these tours when all of a sudden in i think around january or february 2016 suddenly and i actually don't remember how i first heard about it but it it made waves pretty quickly suddenly this a website comes out advertising An air show.

An air show in North Korea.

According to the website, I got some screen grabs here, a number of aircraft types are anticipated to take part, including MiG-21, MiG-29, Sukhoi Su-25, and Strangely Or not so strangely It made sense but it doesn't sound right Hughes MD500 helicopter And then they would also be parked up At the airport As a static display When they weren't flying So it was taking part at Wonsan International Airport, which is on the east side of the peninsula.

It also said the Air Koryo aircraft, which was obviously what I was interested in beforehand, would be taking part.

All the various airliners, Ilyushins, Tupolevs, Antonovs, etc., a few helicopters, they would take part in the flying display.

And there would also be... astonishingly pleasure flights offered um actually this only mentions uh the pleasure flights on the air choreo fleet as it would later transpire some of the air force planes were available for pleasure flights as well which was extraordinary but this this was advertised generated a lot of interest unsurprisingly um At the time, I was like, do you know what? I've been looking at this for a while.

Now, there's no air defense to speak of in Kiev.

If all of the things we're talking about start to happen, whatever air defense is left is going to reduce still further, at which point of course the heavy Russian bombers, the Tupolev's can start to fly over Kiev and can start to drop these bombs.

Y- you have to imagine that if, if this does happen, this would destroy the morale of, of, uh, the Ukraine military and Ukraine troops-

Yes

It's like, don't worry.

I'm sure this Tupolev will fucking keep me very

safe.

I would like to compare it to something that we have both experienced, and that is climbing in any military vehicle and driving faster than 30 miles per hour.

As of last year, the scheduled international network was Pyongyang to Beijing, Shenyang, and Vladivostok, three destinations.

The fleet for international routes is six aircraft, two Antonov-148s, two Ilyushin-62s held for VIP and government use, a Tupolev 154 and two Tupolev 204s, average age just under 30 years.

30 years old, and one of them is the dictator's personal jet, so the commercial fleet is really four aircraft, serving

three cities.