abstract
| - In 1926, shortly after the end of civil war in European Russia, the new Soviet government established the Chief Administration of the Civil Air Fleet to oversee new air transport projects. One of its first acts was to help found Deutsch-Russische Luftverkehrs A.G. (Deruluft), a German-Russian joint venture to provide air transport from Russia to the West. Domestic air service began around the same time, when Sovaero (Russian: Соваэро) was established on 9 February 1927. It started operations on 15 July 1927 between Moscow and Nizhni Novgorod. On 25 February 1932 all civil aviation activities were consolidated under the administration of the Head Directorate of Civil Air Fleet (Russian: Главное управление Гражданского воздушного флота (ГУ ГВФ)), and the official abbreviated operating name of the fleet was determined to be Aeroflot. International flights started in 1937; before that date they had been carried out by Deruluft. By the end of the 1930s Aeroflot had become the world's largest airline, employing more than 4,000 pilots and 60,000 other service personnel and operating around 3,000 aircraft, of which 75% were considered obsolete by its own standards. During the war the primary types of operated aircraft became PS-84 (ПС-84) from September 1942 renamed Li-2 (Russian: Ли-2) and the DC-3 Dakota manufactured under license in USSR since before the war. For mail delivery the U-2 (Russian: У-2), renamed from 1944 Po-2 (Russian: По-2) became the single most used type, serving in other roles such as medical evacuation as S-1 (Russian: C-1) for sanitarny (sanitary). Serving alongside military aviation, the Civil Air Fleet was used to ferry 2.3 million passengers, including service personnel and partisans, and deliver 230 thousand tonnes of cargo, including ammunition. The other role of the CAF was that of training, it produced 23,000 aviation specialists, including 20,907 pilots for the Li-2 and Po-2 aircraft. It was a Li-2 of the 2nd Sevastopol aviation regiment flown by its commander, Colonel A.I. Semenkov that delivered the Act of German capitulation to Moscow on the 9 May 1945. During the Soviet era Aeroflot was synonymous with Russian civil aviation. It became the first airline in the world to operate regular jet services on 15 September 1956 with the Tupolev Tu-104. In 1994 Aeroflot was registered as a joint stock company and the government sold off 49% of its stake to Aeroflot employees. During the 1990s, Aeroflot was primarily focused on international flights from Moscow. However, by the end of the decade Aeroflot started an expansion in the domestic market. In 2000 the company name was changed to Aeroflot - Russian Airlines to reflect the change in the company strategy, but then changed back to simply Aeroflot in 2008.
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