Incredible Adventures, formerly known
as MIGS etc, specializes in making flying dreams come true.
Love at First Flight
The year was 1993. A young American entrepreneur was in
Moscow, recruiting computer programmers for his new software
company when a guy named Andrey offered him a flight in
a MiG-29. It was a case of "love at first flight". He signed
a deal to market the flights worldwide, returned home to
Florida and founded MIGS etc.
Incredible Adventures President Jane Reifert still remembers
what it was like to sell MiG flights in Russia back then.
She was one of MIGS etc's very first employees.
"We placed an ad in the Wall Street Journal for flights.
All day long, we'd get calls from people who thought the
ad was a joke. Obviously they didn't know how expensive
the ads were.
There was no internet back then and there were no cell
phones. Phone lines to Russia were so bad that it could
take an entire day to make one call or send a single fax
to our office in Moscow. We finally had to have a special
satellite line installed to be able to communicate with
our Russian office. We were spending over $3000 a month
on phone calls."
One of MIGS etc.'s very first customers was a reporter
from the New York Times named Peter Passell.
Thanks to the internet, you can still read the story he
published about his flight almost 17 years ago. Another
early customer was Sarah Davidson from New York, who became
the first woman to fly with us.
A lot has changed for the better since the early days
of MiG flights. Back then, our customers would often get
pulled aside by the KGB for questioning. More than once,
our guide had to smuggle film out of the airbase so our
customers would have flight photos. Today, flight customers
are made to feel very welcome and the air base where we
fly provides everyone with a DVD containing video and photos
of their time at the base.
In February of 1994, MIGS etc arranged its first zero-gravity
flight with the Russian Space Agency and officially began
offering cosmonaut training at the Yuri Gagarin Astronaut
Training Center. Other adventures followed and before long,
the name MIGS etc didn't seem to fit anymore. In 1996, MIGS
etc officially became Incredible Adventures.
From 1993 until 2005, MIGS etc and Incredible Adventures
arranged over 2000 flights at Zhukovsky Air Base, a top-secret
facility located about 30 km from Moscow. People from all
over the world traveled to Russia to break the sound barrier
in a MiG-29 or climb to the edge of space in a MiG-25. They
flew accompanied by incredible test pilots from Zhukovsky's
Gromov Flight Research Institute.
In 2005, flights at Zhukovsky came to an end. Fortunately,
as one door closed, another one opened. In this case, it
was the gates of the legendary MiG factory 400 km away in
the city of Nizhny Novgorod. The Russian Government granted
Nizhny Novgorod Aircraft Building Plant Sokol permission
to offer civilians MiG flights and Incredible Adventures
found a new home for its MiGs over Russia program.
Incredible Adventures now offers Russian fighter jet flights
exclusively in the supersonic MiG-29 Fulcrum. Flyers can
choose an aerobatic flight or a high-altitude flight to
the edge of space.
To find out how you can fly a MiG, contact Incredible
Adventures, the American company that began as MIGS etc
and has been making flying dreams come true since 1993.
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