Mad MAX

Yesterday, under the curtain of rain, the Russian air show finally completed its work. The loudest event of the last day was the disruption of the flight of the newest domestic secret fighter T-50. While the vehicle was accelerating, flames burst out of the engine twice and the flight director decided to “abort takeoff.” If the plane took off from the ground, the consequences would be unpredictable. Sukhoi assured that the problem was not serious, but the fighter never took off that day.

As Sobesednik.ru found out, this was not the only trouble that happened with the T-50 at MAKS.

- In fact, there were three cars. Doubles, just in case. But only two flew during the air show,” a source among the event organizers explained to us. - One of them had an engine leak before the flight. Then the incident that everyone saw happened. And then, just in case, they decided not to let the third car in at all, so as not to embarrass themselves and cause it to fall on people. Or maybe there were problems there too.

At the same time, a lot of things could already fall on people. The MiG-29OVT, as at the French aerospace show in Le Bourget, again had an engine failure. And one of the L-39 aircraft of the Baltic Bees aerobatic team had its landing gear burst during landing and its strut broke. The plane almost crashed on its belly. He rolled out of the lane. A powerful side wind blew him straight towards the spectators.

“People didn’t understand that they almost died.” Nobody even ran. Everyone stood and took pictures. The car stopped just a few meters from the spectators. “Lucky,” a source told Sobesednik.ru.

For the pleasure of almost dying, a crowd of almost half a million people spent on tickets from 500 (simple one-day) to 50,000 (VIP pass for the entire duration of the salon) rubles. At the same time, it was necessary to stand in traffic jams at the entrance to the airfield for up to 6 hours and spend up to 2.5 hours in a queue at the turnstile, which smoothly flows into a queue for the toilet (only in the men’s you had to stand for 45 minutes, and at least 2 hours in the women’s).

At the same time, the toilet was perhaps the only free “pleasure” at MAX. It was even forbidden to bring water into the air show territory, and a small bottle of cola inside cost 150 rubles. “Free” press packages with symbols (separate bags, pens, notepads) were also sold here. Current umbrellas and cheap raincoats cost up to 1,500 rubles.

Many viewers complained that, having earned about 100 million on tickets and services alone, the organizers were unable not only to clear the clouds (all weekend at MAKS the planes were almost invisible due to rain), but also to ensure the safety of people by not allowing emergency aircraft to fly.