Vladimir,

Back in the late 80's I was based in Berlin, Tegel.  The Star of Frankfort one of Captain Sim 727-100 is one of the planes based there. We had about 6 or 7 727-100 which we rotated back to the USA on a regular basis for maintenance. We would ferry the planes to Europe via the Blue Spruce route via Greenland and Iceland with a portable INS installed. The ferry portion of the assignment was as much fun as the duty in Germany.

I was assigned a position as an observer at the ICAO meetings each morning. These meetings were to assign the corridor flying for each day. The member nations were the British, French, Russia, Germany and the US. At every meeting, the group would vote to approve the routes of the day. Every day the Russians would vote нет. The vote was the same every day!  ;)

Many times while in the corridor we would see a military plane in the distance. They did not get close enough to bother us. We would cruise at .83 or .86 so we were easy to keep up with. One fine day, a Mig-29 came up along side and was pretty close - maybe a 1,000 feet off the left. We waved to him and he waived back and then slid closer. Now we could see the two pilots pretty well and we took some photos of each other. Then my flight engineer saw that the rear seat Mig pilot was giving us the one finger salute. Not to be out done, the F/E dropped his pants and pressed a big ham against the rear cockpit window. The Mig pilot pulled in closer and we could see him laughing his head off. I think the two Mig pilots talked about how they could do the same to us, but that would be some stunt in that small cockpit with a pressure suit. We waived to each other and away he went leaving me with another story to tell!  8-)

Lou