#ARCTIC. #SIBERIA. THIS IS TAIMYR. The professional holiday of pilots and those who help them from the ground was established by the UN General Assembly in 1996. The This Is Taimyr correspondent talked with the head of the production and dispatch service of the Norilsk airport, Vasily Fedotov, and learned how to ensure the life of the polar air harbor.
Unloading baggage, boarding passengers on a flight – these and other processes are carried out daily with the help of the production and dispatch service. After the aircraft has landed, specialists start servicing it.
“There are clear, specific schedules for servicing the aircraft: towing, shoe installation, interior cleaning, baggage unloading and so on. For example, the popular Boeing-737 with a capacity of 178 people has one hour and 15 minutes. All services must meet the deadline and do their job”, the interlocutor explained.
The traffic at the Norilsk airport is impressive: the port occupies the 4th place in the country in terms of freight traffic. More than 25 thousand tons of cargo pass through it per year, the port serves about 500 thousand passengers. The peak load occurs, of course, during mass vacations. But this year, due to the pandemic, passenger traffic has decreased.
Not everyone knows that Norilsk airport is of the international level – the Trans-Siberian and Transatlantic air routes intersect above it. During the day in the sky over Norilsk dispatchers record up to 80 aircraft.
Another task of the production and dispatch service employees is to ensure the comfort of passengers during flight delays due to bad weather. After a major renovation of the airport over the past few years, delays have decreased.
“We do not make a decision on flight delays, this is exclusively the competence of the airlines. However, we actively interact with them to minimize the inconvenience to passengers. If earlier they had to wait two or three days for departure, now this does not happen. The airport is equipped with high-quality, new technology that allows you to quickly eliminate the consequences of bad weather”, said Vasily Fedotov.
Speaking about professional qualities, he added that every employee of the airport should be stress-resistant and love his profession.
Text: Ekaterina Elkanova, Photo: Artyom Finn and Nikolay Shchipko
