Aeroflot Flight 366
1963 Ditching by Co pilot chechenav
Aeroflot Flight 366, also known as the Miracle on the Neva, was a water landing by a Tupolev Tu-124 of the Soviet state airline Aeroflot (Moscow division). The aircraft took off from Tallinn-Ülemiste Airport at 08:55 local time on 21 August 1963 with 45 passengers and 7 crew on board. The aircraft was scheduled to fly to Moskva–Vnukovo. After takeoff, the nose gear did not retract. Ground control diverted the flight to Leningrad because of fog at Tallinn.
Background
Aircraft
The aircraft involved in the accident was a one year old Tupolev Tu-124, registered as CCCP-45021, being built in 1962. It also had the manufacturing number of 2350701.
Accident
At 10:00 local time, Flight 366 started to circle the city at 450 m (1,500 ft), in order to use fuel, reducing weight and decreasing the risk of fire in the event of a crash. The ground services at Pulkovo Airport (LED) were preparing the dirt runway for the landing. Each circuit around the city took the aircraft approximately 15 minutes.
“Aeroflot Flight 366” enters the record as 1963 Ditching by Co pilot chechenav. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Aeroflot, Flight and Ditching can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“Aeroflot Flight 366” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Aeroflot, Flight and Ditching provides the most credible route into that argument.
Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 25, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1995382. Authority coordinates are 59.920, 30.404. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1963 and 1962.
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This entry incorporates text from “Aeroflot Flight 366” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.