More thoughts on Russian air travel

I must respond to your recent story of riding in a Russian aircraft. It seems when something occurs to someone else, it is history. When it occurs to me it is an experience. We experienced a Russian aircraft. We were on a tour that took us to Tashkent, in Uzbekistan. It is a couple thousand miles (even more kilometers) southeast of Moscow. It is in a pocket. To the south is Afghanistan, to the east is China, and to the southeast is India.

We have never met anyone since then that has even been to Tashkent. After a couple of days there (it is in the middle of the Muslim world) we were then to go to Tiblisi in the country of Georgia. This country is actually the native home of Joseph Stalin; he was not a Russian. It was about 1,500 miles from A to B, crossing the Caspian Sea. The flight left at 1 a.m., three hours to Tiblisi. We suspected that the Russians did not want any westerner seeing their oil installations in the Caspian area and the enormous devastation environmentally, so they scheduled the flight at night.

Russian airports have no jetways. You walk from the terminal to your plane carrying your own luggage. After going up the boarding steps, you dump your luggage into a large bin, and everyone dumps theirs on top of yours. There were no claim tickets.

We sat with our tour friends in the rear part of the cabin wherever we chose. After we were seated and took off, I looked the plane over. The seat in front of me was badly worn and had been repaired with Russian duct tape. Someone earlier had vomited against it and the liquid had dribbled down its back and dried there. By the time we got there it had an odor of its own. The weather was cool so I had a jacket on, and in its pocket I found a peppermint Life Saver — my favorite vice. I popped it into my mouth and pulled my jacket up tight to cover my nose. I let the Life Saver drown out the smell. I set a new personal record in that I made it last 40 minutes.

Shortly after the last of the Life Saver had been downed, the hostess came into the compartment. She was about 6-2. I am sure she would have topped 260 pounds. She did not look like what I recalled an airline hostess looking like. She looked at us and then raised her right hand and made sweeping motions to us. We did not read Russian hand motions so shortly our guide took over and explained we were to all move to the front of the plane, which we warily did. At least I found a more desirable seat.

Several of us asked why the move was called for. Our guide explained that the pilot had requested it. It seems that his weight loading was so far off that he could not get the nose of the airplane pointed downward so he could land the plane. We finally landed in Tiblisi, sorted our luggage out of the freight bin and headed for town. We had experienced a Russian airplane.

Dr. Eugene M. Gillum

Portland[[In-content Ad]]