MAKS-2007 international air show in Zhukovsky, outside Moscow, ended Sunday, August 26, 2007. More than 600,000 visited it in the last three days.
Photo: Grigoriy Sobchenko
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The Mad MAKS
MAKS-2007 international air show in Zhukovsky, outside Moscow, ended Sunday, August 26, 2007. More than 600,000 visited it in the last three days. The attendance was so great that it led to jams of many kilometers and big numbers of visitors needed medical assistance. The arrangers, however, offered apology to no one but President Vladimir Putin, for failure to fetch an ice cream for him.
The path to MAKS-2007 was a real ordeal. There were two basic ways to go to the air show – either by a suburban train or by personal car. Getting on a train at Kazan Railway Station Saturday morning looked like the evacuation scene from a film of WW2. The children were weeping, their parents were shouting, a radio announcer was continuously announcing and police officers were crying in an effort to make order, to no avail though.
Russian Railways (RZD) acknowledged the defeat by roughly 9:30 a.m. and opened gates for free passage. So, the next target of the crowd was to storm trains. The lucky ones couldn’t foresee that their way back would be very thorny.
Those that hoped to get to MAKS by car by 9:00 a.m. showed up there by midday. “The paradise was till Ryazan Avenue,” one of the drivers was emphatic. “It was purgatory afterwards, and the hell started when we turned from Ryazanka. It took four hours to drive the last five kilometers.”
The exhibition pavilions of Russia’s weapons exporter Rosoboronexport and United Aircraft Construction Corp. were nearly empty. The better part of visitors preferred to have the photo taken near the aircraft of Emergency Ministry and near an air taxi with the plate reading: “A Kilometer of Flight – 130 rbl.” The people were queuing to Tu-144, the last Soviet supersonic aircraft that is yet not disposed of. The U.S. strategic bomber B52 and fighter F16 were very popular as well.
According to arrangers, more than 600,000 visited MAKS from Friday through Sunday. The security was ensured by police and riot police of over 7,000, who confiscated 171 knifes and four pistols during personal checks. As many as 14 children first got lost and were found afterwards. More than 1,000 sought medical assistance mostly because of heat strokes. During the final news conference, Federal Industry Agency chief Boris Aleshin offered apology to President Vladimir Putin for the failure to buy an ice cream for him. “The ice cream wasn’t delivered because of the jams, but next time, Vladimir Putin will have it for sure,” Aleshin said without promising to sort out problems of minor significance.
www.kommersant.com
All the Article in Russian as of Aug. 27, 2007
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