Moscow, the capital of the Russian Federation, is a huge modern metropolis located on the territory of the East European Plain, almost in its very center, on the river of the same name. The population of the city, according to the latest census, is about twelve and a half million people.
The total number of people visiting the capital every day, including residents of the Moscow agglomeration from the Moscow region, sometimes exceeds seventeen million on the busiest working days. Traffic flows from various directions intersect here, including numerous air routes.
DME - what airport do you think of?
Three modern air hubs serve the capital's air corridor, and this is not counting several dozen regional airports, as well as private runways. SVO, VKO, DME - the airport always has its own international code. And it is he who is indicated on tickets, boarding passes, baggage tags and any other flight documentation. As a rule, these data are sufficient to accurately determine the necessary information about the flight. However, the vast majority of air touristsreceiving an itinerary receipt or issuing an electronic ticket, a reasonable question arises: DME - which airport in the capital region bears this name?
A bit of history
"Domodedovo", aka DME Moscow Airport, is one of the oldest air hubs in the capital region. The design and construction of this air port began in 1956. Seven years later, the first postal cargo flight took off from the runway of the new airfield, and a year later, a Tupolev aircraft with passengers on board took off.
Domodedovo airport. The State of the Art
Today, Domodedovo Airport (DME) is one of the largest in Russia. In 2013, he let through about twenty-eight million passengers. Two independent airstrips are constantly in intensive use, receiving dozens of planes every day from around the world.
They are located in parallel, two kilometers apart, allow takeoffs and landings from each runway simultaneously and autonomously, independently of each other. Each runway is certified by the international aviation organization ICAO in category CAT IIIA. After the reconstruction of the first runway, which was made two and a half years ago, the airport was able to receive and serve super-heavy transcontinental liners of the Airbus A380 type. In the central part of Russia, the only place wherecan land an aircraft of this type - "Domodedovo" (DME). What airport in our vast country can still boast of this?
Classification and encoding
Each organization uses its own type of coding for airports, navigation fixes (eg VORs) and other ground aviation facilities. DME is the code for the Domodedovo airport according to the IATA classification. According to ICAO, it is already UUDD.
According to the European classification, codes have a three-letter designation, according to the American - four-letter. Sometimes in the designation between the letters there are numbers (especially when designating VOR beacons or small airfields of local importance and private runways). These codes can be compared with each other only for the territory of the United States of America, where the first letter "K" indicates that this is the coding of objects in the United States according to ICAO, and the next three letters completely repeat the code according to IATA. For example, John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City, USA, has the letter code KJFK according to the American classification, while JFK according to the European one. In other parts of the world, encodings do not correlate with each other. And yet the question remains open. Moscow, DME - which airport, and most importantly, why does it have such an unusual designation?
ICAO or IATA, that is the question
It is easy to understand the situation if you look into professional sources of information on aviation. There are two international aviation organizations: IATA (International Air TransportAssociation), or the International Air Transport Association; and ICAO (International Civil Aviation Organization), or the International Civil Aviation Organization. They are currently all headquartered in Montreal, Canada.
Before World War II, IATA was based in The Hague (Netherlands). It was behind the scenes the regulatory and supervisory body in providing air traffic in Europe, while ICAO mainly controlled air traffic in the North American continent. And although the management and development of air routes has been and still is a priority in the work of these two organizations, their role in the daily life of aviation is not limited to these responsibilities. Another, no less important goal is to ensure safe and regular cargo and passenger air transportation, increase the profitability of destinations, any assistance and assistance in providing flights.
IATA in Russia
Here again, doubts may arise. Your e-ticket may contain the following: Moscow, DME. Which airport is needed in this case?
Domodedovo (DME) is an airport in the Moscow region, and it is considered to be the air gate of the capital. However, the airport is geographically located in the Moscow region, on the border of the Ramensky district and the urban district of Domodedovo, forty-five kilometers from the historical center of Moscow in a southern direction and twenty-two kilometers from the city limits of the capital - the Moscow Ring Road. The DME code itself is an abbreviation for the name of the airport. Domodedovo. The remaining air gates of the Moscow region have a similar derived base: Sheremetyevo, aka Sheremetyevo, aka SVO. Or, for example, Vnukovo, aka Vnukovo, aka VKO.
Most airports in the post-Soviet space can be deciphered using European IATA codes. Although there are exceptions. For example, the coding of the airport of the capital of friendly Kazakhstan, the city of Astana, bears the abbreviation TSE, which has nothing to do with the modern name of the city. However, knowledgeable people remember what name this city bore in Soviet times: Tselinograd, Tselinograd. Hence the corresponding code.
ICAO in the post-Soviet space
How is the designation assigned in the ICAO system? There, too, everything is structured and laid out on the shelves. The first letter of the code shows the country, the second - the region, and the last two determine the code of a particular airport. The letter U was assigned to the USSR at one time. After the collapse of the union, the European post-Soviet countries received the European letter-code of the determinant of the region E (for example, the B altic countries), but the main part of the modern independent states, located, as a rule, in Asia, retained the original ICAO codes (Tajikistan, Georgia, Armenia, etc..) Domodedovo received the abbreviation UUDD according to this principle. Other airports such as Sheremetyevo Airport - UUEE.
Codes and flights
What are these codes even for? Can't you just indicate the place of departure, the place of arrival, start the engines andfly with peace of mind, where you want? However, everything is not as simple as it seems at first glance. Several thousand aircraft can be in the air at the same time every day. Not so much, you say, and you will be absolutely right. However, in the air, as well as on the ground, there are specially marked zones - airways.
Any board, cargo or civilian, flies at speeds several times higher than the speed of a car. This is especially true for jet liners powered by turbines. Unlike a car, a plane cannot be stopped mid-air. Each maneuver must be predicted in advance. Even for landing, modern planes begin to approach ninety to one hundred kilometers from the destination airport.
Strict order of actions, fulfillment of all procedures according to checklists, as well as navigation through special flight plans (flight plans) - these are the main points of controlling huge aircraft. Any flight plan is a laid path to the destination point at a predetermined flight altitude (cruising level), taking into account the climb and descent of the liner in preparation for the final approach to the landing glide path.
The path of the aircraft is its projection relative to the ground - the movement from one control point to another along the minimum distance between them, that is, in a straight line. And the most convenient way to describe a point is its unique code in one of the classification systems, that is, IATA or ICAO.
Instead of a conclusion
DME…. Which airport in the Moscow region has such an encoding? Now you are bold and knowledgeableyou can answer - "Domodedovo". And not just to answer, but also to explain the etymology of such an abbreviation, showing off your knowledge in the company of friends or among colleagues.
