In 1971, on the eve of graduation, the chief commander of the academy telegraphed Admiral Sergey Gorshkov about Apakidze's exceptional skills and requested his return to the fleet as soon as he had finished flight school.

[1] In 1975, after his EVVAU graduation in Yeysk, Temur Apakidze was assigned, with the rank of lieutenant, to the 846th Separate Guards Naval Attack Aviation Regiment "VP Chkalov" of the Baltic Fleet.

From the late 1980s to the early 1990s he was considered the best Soviet, then Russian fighter pilot, being the first one who would land a Su-27K (Su-33) on deck of the aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov on September 26, 1991.

On the same day he performed another three landings and afterwards successfully tested the same maneuver at night and under difficult weather conditions, practically becoming the founder of modern Russian naval aviation.

[1] At the time of the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Apakidze served as chief of air combat and tactical training for naval aviation in Saki, Crimea.

Serving from March 1993 as deputy commander and from November 1994 as commander of the 57th Mixed Air Division of the Northern Fleet, Timur Avtandilovich Apakidze was awarded the title Hero of the Russian Federation and distinction Gold Star by the President of the Russian Federation on 17 August 1995, for the development of efficient carrier based education and training programs and his daring and numerous experimental flight tests with the Su-33.

At that point, the only Russian aircraft carrier moved out at sea for only two or three weeks' worth of maneuver training a year, until such activities were ceased completely.

However it was due to Apakidze's commitment that the Admiral Kuznetsov wasn't scrapped like other Soviet vessels as the result of drastic financial cuts in the military, especially the navy.

At first the show went as planned, but when Apakidze performed a complex maneuver,[2] he reported experiencing sudden technical difficulties and from the ground it could be seen that the plane was out of control.