Baltic Bees Flying the Skies of Georgia
The newspaper ad said that an aviation show was going to be held at the Natakhtari Aerodrome in the vicinity of Tbilisi, with Georgian and European pilots to demonstrate their skills flying jet planes. Para-gliders, blimps and parachuting displays were also part of the show. A thing like this has never happened in Georgia before. It certainly caught my attention! Thirty or so years ago I enjoyed this kind of a show in the suburbs of Oklahoma City where I was on my TV journalistic venture for a couple of weeks. At the time, I could hardly imagine I’d ever see such loops, rolls, pitches and yaws in my own country, which is hardly out of the soviet quagmire, still wistfully and desperately skidding and wobbling towards the heights of the cherished Western lifestyle.
Last Saturday, June 24, thousands of drivers descended on the small aerodrome, myself among them, having no idea where to park our cars, frantically trying to stick the vehicles into any open spot on the grassy parking fields to then head to the event on foot. The scene reminded me of a film episode in which the spectators of some grandiose show swarm at a slow pace towards the main venue; eating, drinking, and dragging their kids with them to let them have their own share of the entertainment. The scent of celebration was in the air.
Two local companies- ServiceAir and Vanilla Sky - were the ones to organize the aviation show, intending to lay the foundation for a new festival called FLY-FEST-GEORGIA. Festivals like this take place annually in various European cities, which constitutes a significant component of developing the tourism industry. Indeed, Fly-Fest-Georgia will promote the popularization of amateur and sports aviation in Georgia. Moreover, a young democracy like ours, in combination with our budding capitalism, will probably need to be in the foreground of this type of promotional endeavor for the benefit of its European future. The project was brainstormed and put to life by founder of Service Air Georgia, Amiran Manjavidze, director of Vanilla Sky, Nino Peradze, and veteran of Georgian aviation, Tamaz Andguladze.
The program of the show was absolutely amazing, prepared by the famous Baltic Bees experts: six jets painted like yellow-jackets and flown by genuine aces of aviation, performing the most complicated flight figures in the sky. The entire picture was uncanny. An explosion of applause met the completion of one act which saw a heart being drawn on the blue canvas of the sky with white track smoke.
The Baltic Bees Jet Team was formed in 2008. The first flights were flown in a two-ship formation. In the following years two more jets were added to the team and a full aerobatic display program was created. From the very beginning, the flight instructor and creator of the display program was the skilled aerobatic pilot Valery Sobolev. The program was developed quickly and the Baltic Bees Jet Team gained a reputation as a professional civilian aerobatic display team, based in Jurmala Airport, 60 kilometers west of Riga, Latvia.
The display consists of complex and tricky vertical maneuvers in a six-L-39C aircraft formation and exceptional individual performance with a unique and top difficulty concept which leaves the audience with the feeling that flying in the sky has become for humans more natural than walking the earth, seeing us prevailing over birds in flight skills.
Applauding alongside me at the Fly-Fest were members of the Georgian government, members of the diplomatic corps accredited in Georgia, and representatives of the business community, local and foreign air companies, National Tourism Administration, Georgian Civil Aviation Agency, ladies and gentlemen of the press, and, of course, numerous interested Tbilisians. The following day saw “take-2” of the show in Batumi, met with just as much excitement as the first.
Nugzar B. Ruhadze