The crew of Aviation of Siberia welcomes you aboard
A hundred years above the taiga: how the sky over the planet's largest region learned to fly.
A century-long journey: from the biplane that first rose over Yakutsk in 1925, to today's air hubs at Tolmachevo and Yemelyanovo. Fasten your seatbelt — ahead lie the chronicle, airports, airlines and legends of Siberian skies.
Flight log · 1925—2025
Five eras of Siberian skies: from the first biplanes to a modern air hub. Every entry comes with a source.
Aviation arrives in a land with no roads for thousands of kilometres — and instantly becomes not a novelty, but the only link to the world.
On 8 October, pilot Pyotr Fadeyev took a single-engine Sopwith biplane into the air at the Darkylakh crossing near Yakutsk. On 12 October came the first scheduled flight: Yakutsk–Pokrovsk.
YSIA (RU) →Siberia becomes the front's air corridor — a route through the pole of cold, invisible to enemy aircraft.
A military pilot training school opens — the future foundation of Siberia's main airport.
aviation21.ru (RU) →On 9 October 1941 the military airfield at Tolmachevo enters service. That same year, design begins on the Alsib route — Fairbanks–Krasnoyarsk, 6,500 km across the Bering Strait and the whole of Siberia.
visitsiberia.info (RU) →By July 1942 the route is ready. Krasnoyarsk becomes its terminus — American bombers and fighters were ferried here under Lend-Lease before heading to the front.
visitsiberia.info (RU) →Jet aviation links Siberia with the rest of the country, while the unassuming An‑2 biplane takes on everything else — from mail to field hospitals.
On 31 August, Oleg Antonov's biplane takes to the air. Series production begins on 9 September 1949 — and will run for decades.
techinsider.ru (RU) →12 July: the first scheduled passenger flight to Moscow on a Tu‑104 — the airport's birthday. On 1 December, its first terminal opens.
aviation21.ru (RU) →Near Krasnoyarsk, work starts on a new airport — the future strategic hub on Europe–Asia routes.
kja.aero (RU) →Annual passenger traffic tops 1 million for the first time — while the An‑2 links thousands of villages that had "never laid eyes on an aircraft" before.
aviation21.ru (RU) →Soviet aviation enterprises split into private companies — carriers are born that still hold Siberia's skies today.
25 October: Krasnoyarsk's new airport takes its first flights.
kja.aero (RU) →In Novosibirsk, based at Tolmachevo, an independent commercial airline is founded — the future S7 Airlines.
airlines-inform.ru (RU) →The Irkutsk company starts out in cargo transport; passenger flights follow in 2006, and it later becomes Russia's largest operator of the An‑24.
iraero.ru (RU) →Created as a division of the republic's aviation enterprise; commercial flights begin in 2003.
airlines-inform.ru (RU) →Rebranded and folded into S7 Group. In 2010 the company will be among the first in Russia to join the Oneworld alliance.
airlines-inform.ru (RU) →The century-long journey arrives at international hubs linking Siberia directly with Europe and Asia.
25 September: the second runway opens with fanfare — construction had begun back in 1987.
aviation21.ru (RU) →Krasnoyarsk opens a 58,000 m² passenger terminal — that same year the airport handles over 2.3 million passengers.
kja.aero (RU) →Tolmachevo handles a record 9.68 million passengers a year across 92 routes; Yemelyanovo hosts 25 airlines — a century that began with one biplane over Yakutsk ends in a network of international hubs.
NGS.ru (RU) →Siberia's air gateways
From a military airfield in the taiga to international hubs — the stories of the region's four main airports.
Carriers' flight logs
Who lifts Siberia into the air today — and how these companies got their start.
Legends of Siberian skies
Three stories you can't tell the history of Siberian aviation without: an indestructible biplane, a secret route, and Yakutia's first pilot.
Oleg Antonov's biplane first flew on 31 August 1947, entering series production at a Kyiv plant on 9 September 1949. Its simple, rugged design made it a jack-of-all-trades: passenger, medevac, mail, agricultural, firefighting and training aircraft — everywhere that had "never laid eyes on a plane" before.
Attempts to re-engine it with modern powerplants made the aircraft noticeably more expensive — and no alternative was ever found for hundreds of Siberian villages without airstrips. The An‑2 remains in service to this day.
From October 1941 to July 1942, a 6,500 km air road was built — from Fairbanks, Alaska, to Krasnoyarsk, crossing the Bering Strait and the whole of Siberia. The only Lend-Lease corridor beyond the reach of German aircraft.
Krasnoyarsk became a key link in the supply chain to the front — and largely thanks to Alsib, it grew into the major aviation hub it remains today.
On 8 October 1925, pilot Pyotr Fadeyev took a single-engine Sopwith biplane — a decommissioned British WWI reconnaissance aircraft — into the air over the Darkylakh crossing near Yakutsk. Four days later he flew the region's first scheduled route: Yakutsk–Pokrovsk.
The push to develop air links in those years came from the republic's leaders — Maksim Ammosov, Platon Oyunsky, Isidor Barakhov and Stepan Arzhakov — determined to overcome Yakutia's transport isolation. The entire civil aviation history of Siberia and the Far East is dated from that flight.