Aeroflot Editorial-Publication Department
Aeroflot (air fleet) was the USSR's commercial air provider and it also happened to be the largest airline company in the world prior to the USSR's political demise in 1991. Commercial air travel in the USSR initiated in 1923 when the Sovnarkom approved the expansion of the Red Air Fleet. Thereafter, the Enterprise for Friends of the Air Fleet (ODVF) was formed and it was followed by the creation of Dobrolet (Russian Society of Air Fleet Volunteers). Dobrolet later became the nation's first civil air carrier until 1932 when Aeroflot was accorded the rights. By 1935, Aeroflot was carrying 110,000 passengers annually. In 1956, it began the world's first sustained jet service with flights from Moscow to Irkutsk using a Tupolev (Tu-104) aircraft.
Sources & Citations
Andersson, L. (1994). Soviet aircraft and aviation: 1917-1941. London: Putnam. (Overview of the Soviet air industry)
Davies, R. E. G., Machat, M. (1992). Aeroflot: An airline and its aircraft ; an illustrated history of the world's largest airline. Shrewsbury: Airlife. (Soviet airline history)
Middleton, D. H. (1986). Civil aviation: A design history. London: Ian Allan. (P. 54, citation of 110,000 passengers in 1935)
Odom, W. E. (1974). The Soviet volunteers: modernization and bureaucracy in a public mass organization. Princeton: Princeton University Press. (Overview of Dobrolet and ODVF)
Aerotime.aero/articles/22981. (History of the Tu-104)