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It was February 2014, hours before the closing ceremony of the Sochi Winter Olympics. The city buzzed with anticipation, but inside a small operations room at the Olympic Organizing Committee, panic simmered.
The star of the evening, the giant animatronic Sochi Bear and beloved mascot of the Games, had malfunctioned during final rehearsals. Its right eye had gone dark, and the head servo was locked in a frozen, unsettling tilt. The engineers whispered the truth: it could not be fixed in time.
There was only one solution.
A spare, identical in every way, sat in a warehouse in St. Petersburg, over 2,000 kilometers away.
The closing ceremony was set to take place in six hours, and a similar operation would normally take 24 to 48 hours to plan and execute comfortably.
Standing at 26 ft (8 m) high, the selection of planes capable of carrying it in the cargo hold was severely limited, especially with the Olympics in full swing.
With the Olympics about to start, airport slots were all booked, and if you cannot land the plane at your destination, you cannot take off at all.
It all started with a phone call from an embassy official asking for a private plane to carry highly precious and confidential cargo to Sochi. We immediately thought it was large piles of gold, as we are accustomed to.
When they mentioned it was the Sochi Bear, we nearly fell off our seats, thinking it was a real bear. What followed was like striking a beehive. Our team immediately began a plane-sourcing hunt, reaching out to all European operators who would not only have a plane big enough, but also be in a “take-off ready” status. However, we were well aware that finding the plane was going to be the easiest part.
People saw the bear
Hours is all it took to secure the plane
Willing to do the flight
People involved to make it happen
Tailored private flights arranged with speed and discretion
Rapid medical evacuation with full coordination and care
Safe extraction from conflict zones and high-risk crisis areas.
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