Through the time...

Short Prehistory of the Transport and Telecommunication Institute

On the 24th of May, 1919, in Kiev a School of Aviation Mechanical Technicians was found. The aircarft repair shops and pilots` school - observers of the Kiev Polytechnical Institute - educational establishment where one of the first aviation society in Russia had been organized, were used as the school base. The members of this society were the aviation specialists who became famous later on: a pilot N. Nesterov the first one in the world who performed the "dead loop" and air ram attack; an aircraft designer I. Sikorsky - a founder of the first Russian heavy aircraft and a founder of the helicopter engineering in the USA.

From Kiev the school had been evacuated to Moscow and in 1921 it was shifted to Petrograd and renamed as the Advanced Training Courses for Engineering Staff.

Students of the 30-ties of the last century

In 1938-39 a status of this educational establishment was changing according to the prevailing number of students and listeners raising the level of their skills.

In May 1938 the Courses were given a new name as the First Aircraft Maintenance School, and, at the end of 1939 - again as the courses staying with this name right up till its renaming in 1946 into the First Leningrad Higher Military Aviation Engineering School.

In June 1945 the school was relocated to Riga. In Riga also the Second Leningrad Higher Military Aviation Engineering School was functioning that had been reorganized from the techincal school with similar name. Both schools had two faculties. The first - engineering and special electrical equipment, the second -

RIIGA students

In June 1960 the School was broken up and on its base the civil higher school was found - the Riga Civil Air Fleet Engineers Institute. In 1967 in connection with the reorganization of the Main Directorate of Civil Air Fleet into the Ministry of Civil Aviation, the higher school was named as the Riga Civil Aviation Engineers Institute (RIIGA).

On the 25th of February, 1992, the RIIGA passed under the jurisdiction of the Latvian Republic and changed its name into the Riga Aviation Institute.

To its 80th Anniversary the RAU was the largest higher school in Latvia occupying the third line in the rating of the educational establishments in the country. Unfortunately, at the end of the 90ties the higher school faced a number of internal and external problems, and in August 1999 the Cabinet of Latvia made a decision about the liquidation of the RAU as the governmental higher school. Such wording encouraged its employees to reorganize this educational establishment by now into the non-governmental institution.

On the 6th of September 1999 the Joint Stock Company "Riga Aviation University" had been registered and from October of the same year it was renamed into the Transport and Telecommunication Institute.