On October 20th 2015 Irkut Corporation handed over Yak-52 aircraft to DOSAAF of Belarus during a solemn handover ceremony held in Minsk, BELTA reports.

The aircraft landed at Minsk-1 airport, where it was handed over to the Belarusian party for free as a sponsor support. It will be operated by Mogilev aeroclub named after Kulagin. This aircraft was manufactured in 1990, but it has been overhauled recently. The vehicle’s time between overhaul is 500 hours. DOSAAF also reminded that Irkut handed over one Yak-52 aircraft to DOSAAF earlier.

At present it is used for training cadets of Belarusian air force academy as well as training pilots of DOSAAF itself. Yak-52 is the two-seat sport aircraft, which was one of the major vehicles in its class used for basic training of pilots in USSR in 1980s. Its maximum speed is 470 km/h, range – 500 km.

The vehicle’s ceiling is 6000 m. Notably, USSR also developed a combat version of this aircraft – Yak-52B (Yak-54), which was armed with several unguided missiles. Different modifications of Yak-52 are operated both in CIS Region and foreign countries, including USA, Hungary, Vietnam, etc.