PhosAgro will help Fyodor Konyukhov to set two new world records

PhosAgro will become the general partner of the expedition of the famous traveler Fyodor Konyukhov – a transcontinental flight from north to south in a hot air balloon.

Russian pilots Fyodor Konyukhov and President of the Russian Air Sports Federation Ivan Menyailo challenge two world records at once. The first one is the current distance record – 2,360 km, which was set by the Japanese pilot Michio Kanda on an English shell in 1997 in Australia and the second – is the current flight duration record of 55 hours, which was set by Fyodor Konyukhov and Ivan Menyailo themselves in 2017.

In the near future, Fyodor Konyukhov and Ivan Menyailo plan to improve their own achievement and stay in the air without landing for more than 60 hours, covering a distance of up to 2,500 km. The flight is planned at an altitude of up to 5 km with an average speed of 40-50 km/h.

Specially for this historic expedition, a PhosAgro hot air balloon with a shell volume of 12 thousand square meters was manufactured in Russia – the largest balloon created in our country in the entire history of Russian aeronautics. The height of the structure together with the basket is 36 meters, the weight at the start is 5 tons. The creation of a unique aircraft is an investment in the development of domestic aeronautics and in improving the competencies of domestic specialists.

The flight will start at the end of March-beginning of April 2023 (depending on weather conditions) in Kirovsk (Murmansk region), where the PhosAgro mining and processing complex is located, and will pass, tentatively, through Cherepovets (Vologda region) in the direction of Balakovo (Saratov region), where PhosAgro enterprises producing mineral fertilizers are located.