Burevestnik Airport

Burevestnik (also Iturup ICAO: UHSB Japanese: 天寧飛行場, Tennei-hikōjyō) is a military air base on Iturup Island, Russia, establishing the nation's presence on the disputed Kuril Islands with the largest airfield in the region. It is also the former Soviet Union's most remote interceptor base, home of 387 IAP (387th Interceptor Aviation Regiment). During the 1970s it flew MiG-21bis and upgraded to MiG-23 jets in 1983 ^[1]. Burevestnik's communications and logistics were tied to Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk and supplies were flown in weekly on An-12 aircraft.

Burevestnik's close proximity to Japan's highly populated Hokkaidō Island, by only 190 km, and to major aviation corridors kept the base in a state of constant alert. In 1968, an American Douglas DC-8 was forced to land here after straying off course in the Seaboard World Airlines Flight 253 incident. In April 1983, Burevestnik's MiG-21s were alerted due to a close approach of American F-14 aircraft but did not take off due to bad weather.

As of 2008^[update], a Digital Globe high resolution satellite image accessible through Google Earth showed no evidence of interceptor or other fixed-wing aircraft on the base, other than one non-swept wing transport aircraft occupying the otherwise empty aircraft parking areas. The images also show an old parallel runway about 1 km northeast of the main concrete runway, measuring approximately 1200 m long and 70 m wide.^[2]

Airlines and destinations

References