Where? Kiev - Gostomel, Ukraine
When? 30/09 - 02/10/2010

Aerosvit-XXI 2010 was a good reason to go to the Ukraine. The airshow, which is actually more an Ukrainian aviation exhibition organized by and concentrated around the Antonov Design Bureau (ADB) was held at the companies headquarter at Gostomel, north-west of Ukraine's capital Kiev.

The airfield Kiev-Gostomel proved to be a good location for the show as nearly all Antonov types for the show are already on site. In the back of my head was however not only to see the civil part of Ukrainian aviation and this manufacturer, but also to see their Air Force. This was however a bit disappointing as only one Mil Mi-8 helicopter took part in the daily flight display and not even one jet could be seen around the place.

To open the event on Thursday the mighty An-225 Mriya (Dream) took to the skies, but no photo of it in the air was made due to a bad positioning... Fortunately it was at least possible later during the day to get up close and personal with the 'monster' and get an excellent impression of its size. As the aircraft left the show directly on Friday morning to carry out some heavy duty work no second chance was given to get the desired photos of it in flight.

Besides Antonov's unique construction a lot of the other types were present as well on the vast static display area, which is usually the ramp of the aircraft factory: An-26, An-140, An-148, An-158, An-22, An-22 and An-124 were presented. Unfortunately there was no sign of the new addition to the military transport family - the An-70 - and its current location remained unknown. A nice surprise was however the chance to go and see a part of the active ramp with many rare registered and marked aircraft at one of the show days. Examples are a Georgian An-12, Ukrainian AF An-74 currently waiting for maintenance. Another building revealed furthermore one of Antonov's An-12 currently in maintenance.