INTERNATIONAL TRADE

Landing Russian Business: In a couple of months, an airport in eastern Russia that is operated by an Orange County company will start receiving daily stopovers by major trans-Pacific airlines.

Already, three jet freighters have landed at Elizovo Airport near Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, formerly a top-secret military airport in the former Soviet Union. And many more are on the way, promised Dennis Crosby, executive vice president of the California Kamchatka Cos. in Newport Beach.

“We’re getting pretty close to that point,” he said. “We are working through a number of technical issues.”

Crosby and other California Kamchatka executives hope to turn Elizovo Airport into a top refueling stop for heavy jet freighters flying between the Far East and the West Coast of the United States.

That won’t happen, however, until the airport’s certification process is completed. The first freighter to land, a World Airways DC-10, was required to have a Russian navigator aboard. The navigator is now no longer a must, but each airline needs to bring along a Federal Aviation Administration official in order to have various aircraft types certified at Elizovo.

So far, a Tower Airways Boeing 747 and an American Trans Air Lockheed L-1011 have met that requirement. Having done so, models of those planes can land without the FAA monitor.

“We are going to have at least one flight a day starting in February,” Crosby said. “It will build from there.”