December 22, 2024 is the 65th anniversary of the Faculty of Aircraft of Novosibirsk State Technical University (NETI).
The history of the faculty, then called the aircraft Building, is generally considered to date back to 1959, although the process began as early as 1955, when a group of leading technicians from the Novosibirsk Aviation Plant appealed to the USSR Ministry of Aviation Industry with a request to open an aviation faculty at the Novosibirsk Electrotechnical Institute. The reason is an acute shortage of engineering personnel.
The initiative was supported by the director of the plant I. A. Salashchenko and the director of NETI G. P. Lyshinsky, and already in the fall of 1956, the first hundred people enrolled in the NETI in the specialty "Aircraft Engineering" — at the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering.
On December 22, 1959, Order No. 2031 was issued on NETI: "In accordance with the order of the Minister of Higher and Secondary Special Education of the RSFSR No. 224 dated December 7, 1959 on the reorganization of the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering into two faculties: I. Mechanical Engineering II. Aircraft building". The educational process for future aircraft builders was organized by leading SibNIA scientists. Iosif Grigorievich Kolker made an invaluable contribution to the formation and development of the faculty.
Today, the FLA (the faculty has been named after it since 1988) has 1,340 students in nine bachelor's degree programs, three specialty courses, and six master's courses, as well as 27 graduate students. There are seven departments here: aircraft strength, aircraft and helicopter engineering, autonomous information and control systems, aerohydrodynamics, gas dynamic pulse devices, environmental engineering problems, and technical thermophysics.
Students are helped to master the disciplines by a unique laboratory base: Su-27, Su-25, Su-24 and others aircraft, Mi-8 helicopters, turbojet and rocket engines, wind tunnels, strength test benches, and an ammunition laboratory.
Since 1972, the faculty has operated a student design bureau (SKB). Many projects have been completed here by the hands of staff and students:"Solar Balloon" (2001), "C-52 two-seat aircraft" (2006), "Internal combustion engine with external connecting rods" (2012), "Test bench for aircraft engines" (2013-2015), "ZK-4000 Aviation aluminum internal combustion engine for the Yak-52 aircraft" (2018) and other projects that continue to be implemented.
As part of the Priority 2030 program, a pre-production prototype of the Sarma unmanned aircraft was developed under the leadership of Ilya Zverkov, Professor of the Department of Aircraft and Helicopter Engineering, Scientific director of the SKB FLA, Doctor of Technical Sciences, with the participation of students of the faculty.
In November of this year, the youth Scientific laboratory of Unmanned Aircraft Systems (MLBAS) was established on the basis of the faculty, aimed at the development, design and manufacture of prototypes of a new type of UAS.
Over 65 years, the FLA has trained over 10,000 specialists. Graduates successfully work at enterprises of the aircraft industry in the Siberian region (branch of PJSC "UAC" — NAP named after V.P. Chkalov, SibNIA named after S. A. Chaplygina, S7 Technics — Center for Maintenance and Repair of aircraft equipment of S7 Company, Novosibirsk Aircraft Repair Plant JSC) and at research institutes of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences: ITPM, IG, ITF, IPF, INP.