Engineering News

On Wednesday afternoon at 15:30, an Antonov An-2 utility aircraft landed at Cape Town International Airport, completing a more than 20 000 km flight from the Arctic coast of Russia to the far south of Africa, undertaken to mark the 65th anniversary of Antonov commercial aircraft. The An-2 was the first commercial aircraft design by the company.

The flight was sponsored and supported by Russian aviation company UTAir and South African business aviation company ExecuJet. The aeroplane will now be donated to support charity operations in Southern Africa. It is hoped that, with the support of sponsors, the aircraft will be used both to develop aviation awareness among young people, particularly those in poor and/or rural areas, and to transport aid personnel and supplies when and where needed.

The aircraft was flown by a binational crew of four – a Russian pilot (Sergei Bykov), navigator/co-pilot (Sergei Dmitrenko) and flight engineer (Alexander Achimov) and a British woman co-pilot/trainee (Tracey Curtis-Taylor). “Our average ground speed was 190 km/h,” reported Curtis-Taylor. “That’s slow! Most of the way, we had a bit of a tail wind, which is very useful in an aircraft like this. We were operating at maximum weight. Its short field performance is phenomenal.”

Because of unforeseen delays – climatological, bureaucratic and political – the flight took two-and-a-half months to complete. Logistics were a problem. As a piston-engined aircraft, the An-2 uses fuel called Avgas, which is very difficult to find in much of Africa, and which had to be stockpiled in advance. This was made possible by ExecuJet’s operations team, which specialised in aviation logistics in Africa. The aircraft and crew made a scheduled stop at ExecuJet’s facility at Lanseria International Airport, before continuing to Cape Town.

“This flight caught a lot of attention. Lots of people helped,” stressed Curtis-Taylor. “We especially want to thank the air traffic controllers, over the whole route. They were exceptional, trying to get us the most direct route – it’s a slow aeroplane!”

Originally designed in the then Soviet Union just after the Second World War, the first An-2 flew in 1947 and full production continued until 1992. The aircraft is famous for its ruggedness, short take-off and landing capability and for being the biggest single-engine biplane ever built. It is powered by a 1 000 hp (746 kW) nine-cylinder air-cooled radial piston engine.