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Aeroflot was an excellent company and the flight to Moscow was very pleasant. Due to heavy rainfall we spent our first evening mostly inside our hotel room, except for a short excursion up to the airport to get something to eat. Next day we visited the center of Moscow and were pleasantly surprised at its striking beauty. Didn't see any signs of an economic crisis, and the Russians all seemed very positive and helpful. We definitely must return to visit Moscow properly, we thought as we boarded our plane to Bangkok late in the evening.

Southeast Asia 2000 - Travel Diary, Part 1: Moscow

Jan Arild Teland
2006-05-08 18:12:02

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Day 1 - June 27

Our adventure officially started around 0930 when we left my Ammerud appartment, dropped by the local pharmacy to buy some extra Paracetamol, and then took the airport bus from Grorud at 0958. We arrived at the airport with lots of time for checking in. We were told that our baggage could be sent all the way to Bangkok, even though we were staying one day in Moscow. We decided on this option, since it eliminated the need to find a place to store the baggage during our day in Moscow.

We were quite excited when it was time to board the plane. What would Aeroflot be like? Would it be as bad as their reputation, or was their reputation totally undeserved? On boarding the Tupolev aircraft, we noticed that it looked exactly like....ehm... a normal airplane. There were no chickens, goats or other animals running around in the cabin, the seats were not full of holes, and everything seemed fine. The airhostesses even smiled at us, which was so nice after having had to endure Lufthansa's hostility last year. I also noticed that Aeroflot actually had a row number 13, which is quite unusual for airlines!

However, we had some problems locating our seats 22B and 22C, as only the row number seemed to be given, without any indication of where B and C was. Later we discovered that the sign hanging in the roof, saying "FED CBA", actually indicated that seat F was to the left, followed by seat E etc. We had first thought that the sign just gave the name of some federal organisation called CBA (Communist Block Aircrafts, perhaps? :-) ) , which maybe had built the aircraft or something like that! :-)

The determining moment would however be take off. Were we going to crash right away, or would we survive take off as well? At least the plane departed exactly on schedule 1235. On the runway we noticed that acceleration was not as large as with other aircrafts, but the plane eventually reached the required ...