hessbo

Having flown 3 times HKG-SVO-HKG in 2015 (all in "Premier class" = J) perhaps a short summary will help at deciding for other airlines.

Why I flew with Aeroflot
HKG open-jaws to Europe in business class at about US$1000 return. Relatively short routes and at the cost of Lufthansa's discount economy class.

Cabin: J on Aeroflot 777
30 seats, usually all taken.
- About a third of passengers is below 10 years old, hence the nickname "baby bomber" for Aeroflot's 777. Bring ear plugs (not included in amenity kit). If you some quiet time, just downgrade to Comfort (Premium Economy) class which is usually empty.
- Almost flat seats.
- Cabin temperature on red-eyes is about 30°C.
- IFE at my seat broken on 2 of 6 legs, neighbours also affected.
- Service is hit an miss, sometimes fabulous, sometimes just rude.

SVO
Prepare yourself for bus-boarding at -20°C and hiking up icy stairs to the cabin. The terminal is nicely overheated, lounges are pretty basic and most have no windows. Food is fatty and very simple. There's one shower per lounge.
Good: smoking is absolutely prohibited without any exceptions.

Luggage
Priority luggage service is inoperative since the great SVO luggage chaos in summer 2014. At best, priority bags are delivered with all other bags. In MUC and SXF, priority bags were delivered only after all other bags had been taken.
- 4 suitcases damaged, no compensation received.
- 2 suitcases delayed by 8 days, no compensation received.

Delays
Aeroflot is usually on time.
Only 1 flight was delayed – due to a medical emergency of the incoming aircraft. This let us miss our connection, resulting in a 24 hour stay air-side.
- Business class passengers are accommodated in the "V-hotel" (= hourly paid soviet-style youth hostel within Terminal E) and must share accomodations even if on different PNR. Rooms are tiny, overheated and one is woken up regularly by security announcements or the bouncer kicking out other people.
- Aeroflot pays a maximum of 8 hours at the "V-hotel". After that, one must pay for additional hours or check-out.
- Food vouchers (RUB 1960 per 24 hours) are redeemably at some restaurants.

fifty_two

Ok , so thanks for the advices. It seems that i should avoid SU in winter and for my suitcases i should use an old one with not-so-useful items (and keep valuable things in hand luggage)

About the V hotel is it this one http://www.eng.v-exp.ru/ ? If this is for J paxs m what about Y paxs ? they will sleep on the floor i guess ?

2000RUB is around 25€ ! thats great if you wanna survive in a airport for 24hours !

Frankonthemove

Ive flown Aeroflot about 8 times in the last 6 months and am continually impressed. Efficient website, great app, good service, always with a smile when Im heard to be a foreigner. No problems flying Aeroflot in the future. ^^

woody125

That's a refreshing point of view and one I concur with fully. Thanks for telling the good about flying SU!

globalseeker

I recently flew on Aeroflot from New York JFK to Tokyo. I had a massive layover in Sheremetyevo airport going to Japan and returning. (The second half was 15 hours) and I was awoken by the police to review my ticket and passport.

Back to the airline - It was fine. I sat in Economy and had space because the flight was not entirely full. They have a little entertainment center in the back of each seat. The buttons are really bad quality. The movie selection was excellent. They had most of the recent hits including classics and bunch of great TV shows. But the remote is a piece of junk and you need to push the button extremely hard to get it to navigate and sometimes it won't work and the screen freezes.

The earbuds are very poor quality and I didn't like the sound coming out of them. You need to crank it high to hear the show. The food was pretty good, I can't really complain. I thought the quality was fine.

The seats are leather and have decent cushion, they give you a pillow and blanket, sandals and eye covers as usual. I didn't sleep much on the flight because there were so many great movies and shows to watch.

The staff was fine, respectful and polite. The airport (Sheremetyevo) is modern and there is free wifi at a few spots in the airport. I believe the name is MTS or something but that's the free spot. You will need some Rubles to dine at the airport as well so bring those in advance. They have TGI Fridays, Burger King, and a few Russian cafes. There are tons of Duty Free shops and ultra high end luxury shops selling expensive goods. I found the airport to be boring though. If you are not a super tight budget traveler as I am, they also have capsule hotels inside the airport. They are not even expensive and throughout this airport you can find these strange glass rooms where people sleep and set up camping tents. It's like $50 or something for a few hours which isn't bad if you do choose the hotels but if you are a budget person you can lay down in one of these glass rooms. Some of the characters in them were a bit questionable but this is Moscow and I highly doubt anyone would steal from you, given the video cameras observing what's happening.

hessbo

There were indeed quite a lot of people sleeping on the floor or in tents inside the terminals. I'm not sure but it seems that these are stranded there for weeks/months.

And yes, 2000RUB doesn't seem so bad at first but they can only be redeemed at few restaurants – and not the restaurants that actually look tempting.

urww

What I marked red is definitely not true. I'm not a fanboy of Aeroflot and with ongoing monopolisation and increased government regulation of the industry the service keeps getting worse. However it is just what I know from my own experience. This ridiculous policy of sharing a standard double room with a stranger of the same sex applies only to Y pax with no status. It's never been applied to Biz class pax (always a room per pax, even if you fly with you wife, both can get a room). For the moment it's not applied to Aeroflot Bonus Gold and SkyTeam Elite Plus customers as well (and it's been like that since 2012). This policy is even printed out and on display at an Aeroflot Service desk.

As for the hotels. Normally Aeroflot accommodates pax at Novotel SVO or Park Inn SVO. My father was recently accommodated at a new Radisson SVO hotel on missed connection. I personally experience that multiple times with the record of 50 hours delay (due to weather at destination). All that time I spent in a superior room at Novotel with BB and dinner provided in the main restaurant. I was flying Y on a domestic 1h30m flight (STE+). Of course to get accommodated at the mentioned properties you should be able to enter Russia and SU can do nothing if a pax requires a visa. However there is always 24 hour Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs Rep on duty in the airport who can arrange an emergency visa for anyone. However I don't know if missed connection and need to be accommodated at a hotel qualify.

Made me laugh. The author should decide was it hostel OR soviet style, because there were NO hostels in Soviets.

Chinatrvl

+1. I daresay a good amount of b/s in that report.

ironmanjt

I'll have the pleasure of Yakutia from OVB-GDX this summer, followed by a couple flights on SU operated by Aurora. What in particular makes them so bad?

hessbo

urww, I had also read and heard about that, so that's what I had expected to be accommodated in . However, I was told that since I am not Russian citizen nor holder of a visa, I would have to stay in the transit area for the next 24 hours and only this option was available.

So Aeroflot provided one twin room in the V-Express hotel in Terminal E from 10:00pm to 6:00am . It had a sealed frosted glass wall behind the curtain. There was no other room available and several families queuing at the hotel front desk hoping to get a room if someone cancels.
A link to the hotel on tripadvisor: https://en.tripadvisor.com.hk/Hotel_...al_Russia.html

Just to avoid any misunderstandings, we are both Aeroflot Bonus Gold members and travelling in business class (destination HKG) on separate PNRs. We are both not Russian citizens and do not have Russian visa.

I hope that Aeroflot treats other pax in a nicer way.

Here some of the memories of the trip.

Broken remote of seat 3C.

SVO V-express hotel room.

Bus boarding at -20°C.

Luggage at arrival.


Also do you remember where to find the "24 hour Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs Rep on duty in the airport who can arrange an emergency visa for anyone"? I'd be happy to pay for accomodation in Novotel/Radisson out of my own pocket next time.

miamiflyer8

Never flown SU but will someday. I have heard both good things and horror stories.

DrRodneyMcKay

I recently flew Aeroflot from Moscow (VVO) to Petropavlovsk Kamchatsky and I must say, there was a lot of nice things about the flight, but one thing absolutely stunned me, and that was the passengers' behavior.

This was a flight with a lot of kids (past toddler age, mostly 5+) and their parents (and I"m talking multiple people) would start playing videos loudly on their iphones to entertain their children *without headphones*. The passengers right in front of me were doing it, and I, being super noise sensitive, asked them (in Russian) if they might perhaps have headphones. They looked at me like I'd grown a second head. the flight attendants also did nothing to stop this, even though it was technically a redeye flight. This was an Aeroflot flight but operated by Rossija airlines, and for some reason they did not hand out headphones to everyone as I"m used to on Delta/Skyteam flights even though this was a 9 hour flight (I now realize the value of handing out headphones to passengers). In general, I found the passengers abominably rude even though the plane, the flight attendants, and everything else was quite nice. I generally find that was is considered acceptable/good etiquette in Russia differs very much from the U.S. but I was still stunned. Has anyone else experienced this kind of behavior? Is this normal? Because I think it's actually rather utterly ridiculous.

Temedar

Yes, though noisy drunk people are a much more frequent experience on flights here. You can't change the people, but at least you can complain to Aeroflot - they might give you some miles as compensation.

DrRodneyMcKay

Don't even get me started on the drunk people. I flew Ural airlines back and they announced multiple times that consuming alcohol that they don't serve on the flight is against the rules. we still had a plane of drunk people. I am still in shock. Believe me, I will be complaining to every airline and everyone who could potentially give me compensation.

I don't understand it, though; headphones aren't exactly a huge investment. What is so difficult about packing a pair? It seems to be a general Russian "I don't give a .... about you" attitude.

pjs

Quick review of a couple of recent SU flights as part of a trip to Moscow and a Baltic cruise:

6/16 - SU2579 LHR-SVO - A330-300 - Business Class

I booked Skymiles Biz class award tickets for my wife and I. We flew from ATL to LHR on Virgin Upper Class, transited from T3 to T4, relaxed in the Skyteam lounge, then it was time to board Aeroflot.

When the boarding gate was announced, we headed downstairs to our gate. The boarding process was orderly. Our passports and visas were checked prior to boarding and we boarded through the Sky Priority lane. The seats were angle-flat in a 2x2x2 configuration in business class. Biz was less than half full although economy was fairly full.





We were offered champagne or orange juice prior to departure and given menus and wine lists. Didn’t get a pic of the wine list – sorry.



We received amenity kits, which were pretty basic, and headphones. An announcement was made that no electronics (even in flight mode) were allowed during taxi, takeoff and landing. I thought this was a little odd, but perhaps its due to the language barrier or something like that??

The flight attendants were all very friendly and attentive. After takeoff, meal service began. I ordered their special cocktail with whiskey and apple juice. I also ordered a glass of ice water, but the flight attendant apparently misunderstood and brought me both the cocktail and a separate glass of straight whiskey on ice. I didn’t want to hurt her feelings, so I drank both

The food was actually very good. I ordered the ham appetizer and my wife ordered the salmon. We both had the cod main course and tiramisu dessert. The pretzel rolls were particularly good as well. The table was set nicely, but then the appetizer was served on a cheap-looking plastic tray.

I decided to watch a Russian movie (with subtitles) as when else would I get to see one? It was really good – The Battle for Sevastopol – about a female Soviet army sniper from WWII who was part of a delegation that met Eleanor Roosevelt in Washington when the Soviets were seeking assistance on the Eastern front. It must have been one of the biggest budget Russian movies ever due to the realistic battle scenes .

After the meal, the cabin chief came around and asked us how we liked the service, which was a nice touch. He even leant me his name badge so I could use the pin to try and pop out my SIM card and switch to the Russian one, but of course the SIM was cut to the wrong size so I would have to get it fixed in Moscow.

We landed about 20 minutes late and had a long taxi to the gate. Immigration took about 20 minutes in line - no problems with our 3 year visas. We got our luggage fairly quickly and met our driver in the arrivals area.

6/19 - SU2210 SVO-ARN - A320 - Economy

We were picked up at our hotel around 7:15am. There was no traffic at that time on a Sunday morning, but it was slow getting into the airport as every car receives a security check before driving to the terminal. He dropped us off and we went to check in for the Aeroflot flight. As were flying economy this time, we stood in a long line. Luckily, they opened a new line and took several of us to that line. Luggage was fine – I had expected them to make us check and pay for my wife's extra rollaboard.

We went through immigration and security (very efficient) and then looked for our gate. Ugh – a bus gate. We were glad we had eaten as there was only a Burger King near our gate. We boarded our bus about 30 minutes prior to departure and drove out to the plane. The weather was nice so it wasn’t bad.

The flight to Stockholm took about 2 hours, but we gained an hour on the way. They did serve a snack on the flight, but it was just a dry sandwich of some sort. There were quite a few fellow cruisers on this flight who had flown from JFK or DC to Moscow overnight and connected to this flight. They said Aeroflot was a good deal on the airfare.

Aeroflot was efficient, the service was friendly and we enjoyed our experience. Wouldn't hesitate to fly them again.