Extended MHD Leg One - SCO (Aktau) to DMD (Moscow Domodedovo)

Kaliningrad Avia flight 993...Tupolev 134 A aircraft

A 7:40 am departure from SCO means my driver came around to my apartment at 6:15 and we headed out to the airport. Aktau airport is very typical of Soviet-era airports - run down buildings, very slow, no lounges, no jetways.

I stood in line and passed through customs without incident, dropped my bag off and picked up my boarding pass (no seat assignments...ever heard of "festival seating"?). I strolled into the waiting area and happened to run into one of my other expat business associates. She was on her way home to Germany, so it was nice to have someone to talk to on the flight.

We herded onto the "bus", if you can call it that (basically a glorified cattle herder) and puttered out to the aircraft. Since there are no seat assignments, everyone pushes and shoves to get on the plane first. I'm surprised there aren't any news stories reading "Foreigner Gets Trampled By Storming Herd of Airline Passengers as He Tries to Get a Seat".

The Tupolev-134A is similar in size to maybe a Fokker 100 - about 80 seats, no business class, old planes, built for purpose not comfort. I tossed my computer onto the overhead "shelf" (not "bin", "shelf").

Russian planes have flight crews of FOUR (pilot, co-pilot, navigator, radio operator), and there were four very attractive Russian stewardesses on this flight.

Meal service is pretty much non-existent. The FAs roll the drink cart down the aisle about forty minutes into the flight (alcohol is available and people do buy it that early...scary). No sandwiches or anything. Coffee service a bit later.

Flight time was just under three hours, and we landed at the newly-renovated Domodedovo Airport outside of Moscow proper right on schedule at 9:30 local time. While there are new jetways at the airport, we got a tarmac spot and a bus (a nice bus this time).

A sidebar about Domodedovo Airport. Two and a half years ago, when I moved to Kazakhstan, I travelled through DMD and it was an absolute dump of a Soviet-era airport. Incredible inefficiencies, long lineups, dark, awful.

Since that time the company that runs the airport, East Line, has spent millions of dollars to completely renovate the airport, so much so that it is absolutely not recognizable. It is now a beautiful glass structure, well-lit, modern, jetways, and two runways certified to handle planes as large as 777s! There is talk of trying to lure Lufthansa and other airlines away from Sheremetyevo, as the new DMD is a very modern airport.

Anyways, back to my report. Plane landed without incident, I collected my bags after going through the passport control, my driver picked me up and he took me to the Novotel at Sheremetyevo to await my next flight. (And on the way he stopped at McDonald's for lunch...)

More to come...