The business of getting Catalina G-PBYA to Russia proved an assault course for Plane Sailing's doughty 'men in black'. Its pilot Rod Brooking had innumerable problems getting flight plans approved across Belarus and Russia, after an overnight stop en route in Bydgoszcz, Poland. It took time for ATC in Belarus even to confirm entry into their airspace, but no interceptors appeared on their wing before they were finally acknowledged. Then, on finals at Zhukovsky, they were suddenly made to do a 360° turn, but landed without incident, other than the controller's increasingly urgent exhortations to clear to the end of the 5km-plus runway speedily. Russian bureaucracy changed the rules for their minimum display height from 100m to 50m, but they were then criticised for flying their practice too low by another set of bureaucrats. Sometimes you cannot win! The public, when they saw who they were, treated the PBY crew like rock stars, and top generals and Sukhoi's chief test pilot visited the aircraft.
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