The Wall St. Journal ran an article this morning saying that Russia is the most dangerous country in which to board an airline, outpacing 3rd world countries with terrible safety records. Dangers included badly trained and drunken pilots and insufficient maintenance. I'm not sure everyone will be able to read this link if you are not a subscriber, but if you do enough googling, you can probably find other free places where the articles is quoted (like flytertalk.com)
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204449804577068483346152726.html?mod=WSJEurope_hpp_LEFTTopStories
Safe travels!
Russia most dangerous country to fly in
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PS: I would take that as a warning not to utilize Russian carriers in other countries as well.
The heading is misleading since the problems presumably do not apply to international carriers flying into Russia.
I wasn't particularly thrilled with the strong alcohol smell permeating the whole passenger cabin during a flight I took from Copenhagen-St. Petersburg back in June 2005. The airline was SAS.... unsafe all around.
DS spent a semester in Russia and laughed that they all but have straps from the ceiling for their crowded flights!! When we had Russian guests one time, a charming young man came down with his things in a black plastic trash bag to take with him on the plane. Nothing like it!! But it IS Russian carriers--Aeroflot.
MIchael,
The article described several take-off or landing crashes at major aiports, including Moscow. I would not want to be sharing limited sky-space with pilots who do not have adequate equipment for making airport approaches in snow, rain, fog, etc, nor would I want to be sharing space with planes being flown by drunken pilots.
As for the headline, I can't edit it, but most people get the difference between "in" and "into". The WSJ article noted that some international business do not let employees fly into Russia, directing them to detour into Vienna or Helsinki.
What about Air Zimbabwe and Airfrica, I know they are not on this forum but surely they fall into the same catagory
This link may be more complete:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204449804577068483346152726.html
Sorry - - apparently following links to the article gives you the "register now" truncated version. If you want to see the whole article (well worth it for the whole story, the graphics, and the video links) it should work if you go to Google News:
http://news.google.com/nwshp?hl=en&tab=in
And do a search for the article title:
Russia Faces New Air-Safety Crisis
We took the SAS flight in Sept from Copenhagen to Mos and it was great--we particularly loved the food. I think they have probably improved since your 2005 epxerience.