Khodynka Field - Khodynka Airfield

Khodynka Airfield

The first flight in Russia took place at Khodynka, carried out in 1910 by R. Rossinsky. In 1911, pilot Alexander Vasiliev landed his Bleriot XI there, becoming the only finisher of 11 pilots who started a 453-mile race from St.Petersburg to Moscow. Starting in the 1930s, the airfield played annual host to Aviation Day festivities, held on the third weekend in August.

A. S. Yakovlev worked as a mechanic at the airfield for a time in the 1920s, and examined the wrecks of various aircraft present in the ravine near the field during work on his earliest powered aircraft designs.

The airfield is surrounded by a variety of restricted-access facilities, including the main headquarters of Aeroflot, design bureaus for Ilyushin, Mikoyan Gurevich (MiG), Sukhoi and Yakovlev, the Aircraft Production Organization No. 30 (MAPO), and GRU headquarters ("the Aquarium"). The National Aviation and Space Museum (aka the National Aeronautics Museum or the Museum of the Air Forces) was on the airfield proper.

Flights into or out of the airfield apparently continued to at least 1989, but the runways existed into the 2000s (decade) (see the Google maps link for an excellent satellite image of one of the runways apparently being torn up).

Current plans for the site include a modern air and space museum, expected to be the largest in the world upon completion.

The airfield is close to several Moscow Metro stations including Dinamo and Aeroport on the Zamoskvoretskaya Line, and Oktyabrskoe Pole on the Tagansko-Krasnopresnenskaya Line, which is named after Khodynka field.