The dreaded Aeroflot
Over the years I heard many horror stories about taking the flight to the US via Moscow/Aeroflot. In general, things seem to have improved a fair bit over the past few years, but I have always chosen to avoid it. This year, with the new and unimproved prices in Euro, I took the plunge and bought my ticket via Moscow...
Now, it was not exactly a horror story, but I will say that avoiding this option is an excellent idea, and worth spending more on. It is a looong flight from Moscow to LA, and I could not sleep for one minute, so I had plenty of time to lament the lack of a decent entertainment system. They had a few small TV screens hanging down along the middle of the plane, with - you guessed it, bad Hollywood movies, dubbed in Russian, with English subtitles. The food was, in a word, terrible, and I don't usually complain about airline food - it is what it is. They served us two meals on the flight, exactly the same, and their love of cold fish again showed through. In that looong period between meals, they were not interested in seeing passengers, talking to them, and most certainly not in helping them. You could pick up a cup of water and that was all. The airport - Sherenksdjkfshdiougf-2 or something like that, had few places to sit, nobody selling cards to access the wifi (which was free at Zvartnots in Yerevan!), and the bad food they sold was excruciatingly expensive, as was the telephone calls, which I think they overcharged me something 5x the price. Oh yes, and most of these Russians either didn't speak English, or didn't want to speak English.
On the up side homeland security was in a good mood and I whizzed through LAX with both bags in a decent time.
Now, it was not exactly a horror story, but I will say that avoiding this option is an excellent idea, and worth spending more on. It is a looong flight from Moscow to LA, and I could not sleep for one minute, so I had plenty of time to lament the lack of a decent entertainment system. They had a few small TV screens hanging down along the middle of the plane, with - you guessed it, bad Hollywood movies, dubbed in Russian, with English subtitles. The food was, in a word, terrible, and I don't usually complain about airline food - it is what it is. They served us two meals on the flight, exactly the same, and their love of cold fish again showed through. In that looong period between meals, they were not interested in seeing passengers, talking to them, and most certainly not in helping them. You could pick up a cup of water and that was all. The airport - Sherenksdjkfshdiougf-2 or something like that, had few places to sit, nobody selling cards to access the wifi (which was free at Zvartnots in Yerevan!), and the bad food they sold was excruciatingly expensive, as was the telephone calls, which I think they overcharged me something 5x the price. Oh yes, and most of these Russians either didn't speak English, or didn't want to speak English.
On the up side homeland security was in a good mood and I whizzed through LAX with both bags in a decent time.
Labels: aeroflot, airlines, flight, LAX, moscow, transit, zvartnots
posted by Raffi K. at 8:01 PM
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