Traditionally, in the aerospace field, the phenomenon of children inheriting their father's business is more serious, but this does not apply to our protagonist today, Svetlana Kapanina. She is the only female pilot to win the first prize in the World Aerobatic Grand Prix. In addition, she has won seven consecutive Women's Aerobatics World Championships, thirty World Championships and fourteen individual European Titles. Her name was recorded in the Guinness Book of World Records, becoming the most famous sports aviation pilot.
Svetlana Capanina (hereinafter referred to as Kapanina) was born in December 1968 to the son of a driver and loves a genre of motorsport – ice-patterned car driving. At a very young age, the father instilled in his daughter a love of speed, a love of reasonable risk.
When Kapanina was a middle school student, she enjoyed athletics and rhythmic gymnastics in addition to motorcycles. In this regard, she even passed the criteria of the Candidate for a Master of Physical Education in the USSR. Although she has spent more time training than she has studied, her academic performance is still very good, and she is a complete honor student. But her first job had nothing to do with Fast Passion—a pharmacist.
Fast forward to the 1980s, and Kapanina lived in a city with an aviation club that made a difference in her life. She wanted to practice becoming a skydiver, but the club's coach persuaded the girl to test fly on the Yak-52 athletic trainer. Eventually, Capanina moved to work for the Flying Club, becoming an electrician technician and flight cadet.
In 1991 Kapanina became a member of the Russian State Aerobatic Team and the following year as a train pilot. In 1993 Kapanina competed in the European Championships and won a silver medal. In 1995, Kapanina graduated from the Flight Technical School in Kallu California and won the "silver medal" at the World Championships in South Africa in the same year, when she was the only female participant at the time. In 2000, Kapanina became a train pilot at Sukhoi's flight testing and development base and mastered various types of aircraft equipment. This included the Yak-50, Yak-52, Yak-55, Su-26, Su-29, Su-31, German Extra 300 and Extra 330, as well as the world's most widely used all-metal coach glider L-13 Brenik, then manufactured in Czechoslovakia.
Kapanina has been invited several times by prestigious foreign aviation clubs, but she has always insisted on performing and winning awards only on planes with Russian serial numbers and flags.
In an interview with the Russian Satellite News Agency, she once said: "I am glad that Russia has more and more aerobatic show teams. As a symbol of the strength of the national aviation industry, I would like to pay more attention to the revival of sports aviation and small aviation at the national level." It can be seen that she has placed a lot of expectations on the development of the Russian aviation industry.