Bezymyanka (airport)

Bezymyanka - experimental (test base) aerodrome of the aviation plant Aviakor in the city of Samara. Located 4 km east of the railroad station Bezymyanka, Kirov district of Samara, 12 km east of the city center.

To the east of the airport another Airport Smyshlyaevka is located, to the south the settlements Chkalov, Padovka and the Samara River, to the north the Aviakor plant and TsSKB-Progress plant.

Bezymyanka Airport rated 1 class and can serve most of the airplane and helicopter types. Total runway length 3,600 m, 2,800 m usable.

Founded in 1942, the first runway utilized bricks as its pavement. After the Second world war strike the aviation plants №1 and №18 were evacuated to Kuibyshev (Samara nowadays) from Moscow and Voronezh. At the earliest possible date they set up the production of Il-2.

In the second part of the 20th century the airport served as the testing ground for a number of Tupolev, Ilyushin and Antonov planes produced by the abovementioned aviation plants.

Since 1958 plant №1 was reorientated for the production of space rockets and artificial satellites, airport started charter transport service to Baikonur and Plesetsk, such services continues nowadays. In 1980th airport was used to transport components of Energia rocket carrier to Baikonur on the VM-T aircraft in preparation for the Shuttle Buran flight. For this case the runway was lengthen up to 3,600m.

Airport redevelopment plans includes construction of the cargo terminals to convert it into international cargo airport with a better industrial location than Kurumoch. Similar project was done in Ulyanovsk with the construction of Ulyanovsk Vostochny Airport on the basis of the test facility of Aviastar-SP.