— Keeping Traditions. A Report on the Vologda Aviation Enterprise, the Yak-40, and the Soviet Terminal — Fraudulent Pilots. How Line and Commercial Pilots Receive Disability Benefits — Made in Russia. A Report from the Conference on Remote Diagnostics and Repair of Aircraft Engines If you want to watch our episodes more often, support us financially. We can make episodes at least every week. There are many interesting topics for filming, but there are few resources. Even 100 rubles will help us if 1,000 people send them. 1) Support FlightTV to your Tinkoff Bank account https://www.tinkoff.ru/collectmoney/c... Tinkoff Bank accepts money from any debit card of any Russian bank without commission. 2) Make a transfer via the SBP by phone number +74957908469 (select Tinkoff Bank). 3) Support FlightTV via Sberbank card 2202 2008 0078 2664 (recipient Tatyana) Before the flight, I talked to the crew of the Yak-40, which took us from Moscow to Vologda and back. A graduate of the Kirsanov School, Mikhail Kirshin has been flying as a flight mechanic since 1985, because he was not accepted as a pilot as a child. He is happy with his job, but he still wanted to learn how to fly an airplane himself, and in 2013, at the age of 56, Mikhail became a private pilot. In general, due to the high cost of fuel, the Yak-40 with three turbojet engines is very unprofitable in the era of capitalism. With fuel consumption of one and a half tons of aviation kerosene per hour of flight, the cost of fares from Vologda to St. Petersburg and Moscow should be no less than 15,000 rubles. But tickets for passengers are sold here for a third of the economically determined cost, and the difference is compensated by subsidies. But despite the significant fuel consumption for transporting passengers, minutes on Moscow flights at the Vologda Aviation Enterprise are not cut out. Although the flight to Sheremetyevo would be 10 minutes shorter, which is noticeable for a flight lasting a little over an hour. But not everything is as rosy as it seems at first glance. The calendar resource of the Yak-40 airframe is 50 years or 45,000 hours, the overhaul is 28 years or 12,000 hours. All of the Vologda Aviation Enterprise's aircraft were manufactured from 1976 to 1978. This means that the question of their further operation will arise relatively soon. According to our sources, negotiations are underway with the Yakovlev Design Bureau to extend the total service life of the airframes to 60 years. And in addition, there is a problem with the AI-25 engines, which were produced in Zaporozhye. = According to the Washington Post, U.S. authorities are investigating the medical reports of nearly 5,000 pilots suspected of lying to the Federal Aviation Administration about receiving benefits for mental illnesses and other serious conditions. The men are former military pilots who downplay their ailments to the FAA in order to continue flying, but disclose them in full to the Department of Veterans Affairs in order to receive disability payments. The discrepancies between the information provided at civilian medical examinations and the actual state of affairs were revealed when federal databases were cross-checked. The investigation has uncovered vulnerabilities in the FAA's medical certification system, where medical tests are often superficial and the agency relies on pilots to report hard-to-detect conditions like depression and post-traumatic stress disorder. At least a dozen pilots have been prosecuted in the past five years for lying about disability benefits and concealing medical histories, court records show, with two cases coming to light after the pilots crashed. For example, Matthew Jones, 35, an Army veteran who served in Iraq, pleaded guilty to fraud charges last December after he ignored weather warnings and flew a helicopter into a mountainside, killing a passenger. He failed to tell the FAA that he was receiving veterans benefits for seizures, and had also suffered several strokes and used marijuana, court records show. = The second scientific and practical conference, “Remote Diagnostics and Repair of Aircraft Engines,” was held at the Soluxe Hotel in Moscow. It was organized by the Industrial Optics Research Center, a Russian manufacturer of video endoscopes, borescopes, high-speed video cameras, and other specialized equipment. Video endoscopes under the JРrobe brand have been manufactured for over 25 years and have become recognized leaders in a quarter of a century. This event was not theoretical; the conference demonstrated working prototypes and serial products with new methods of defect diagnostics - fluorescent and eddy current testing. Previously, Russia did not make devices with such capabilities. And what is interesting is that in their production they used affordable components that do not run the risk of falling under sanctions, and also with original methods and modes of operation. "Industrial Optics" is ready to support Russian manufacturers of the component base with orders.