Vnukovo Madness!!
 

For the first time in my life passengers were on time, slightly in advance, door closed and everything was great ! weather was good no sequence at all on take off!!! i asked for start at 16.30 gmt....

"vnukovo ground ***412 infotmation K from Vnukovo 3 request start up clearence!"

reply:" **412 vnukovo ground STAND BY"
i thought everything was good and in one or two minutes i would have been cleared for start but....

at 16.40 i tried again my request, answer was still" STAND BY"

after 20 minutes my passengers became to get nervous and one of the came in the cockpit to ask what was going on...

i called on ground frequency again to get an estimate! reply:"STAND BY!"

in the mean time several pilots from Vnukovo 3 asked for start...

big mess! no departure, no take off, the airport seemed to be closed, i decided to call the handling agent!

"big problem sir! there will be a departing government flight, they don't know about the delay expected!"

no problem, i thought, i'm on ground, i have a lot of fuel, i can stay with my apu in my warm cockpit but what about the guy coming from europe with a small bizjet who is holding over somewhereNDB runnin short of fuel? because you have to know that there were no notams concerning that...

i guess they didn't asked themselves...anyway after one hour i tried again, and my voice that time was a little bit louder...

"***412 REQUEST AN ESTIMATE FOR START"
"***412 Vnukovo Ground (because you can tell everything about russian ATC but they are very precisely concerning call outs) STAND BY!!"

There is a special raccomandation for GA pilots: it's 3C CALM, COOL,COLLABORATIVE...
TRY THAT IN VNUKOVO IF YOU CAN...

i insisted" My passengers need to know at what time we can leave, pleeeeeaaaase!"

"*** 412 vnukovo ground, expect start in two three
(2\3) minutes.."

after 5 minutes i asked again....

reply:"***412 vnukovo ground, i said two three, 23 twenty three!!!"
:ugh:

ok, no problem guy, let's do that! calm, cool, collaborative but in the meantime my boss came up to me and said that was crazy and he were supposed to be in rome at a certain time and was incredible that we could not have an estimate and bla, bla, bla...a lot of money for that flight...we are in 2008...men on moon...tried to stay cool but i think it did't work so good but....

In the mean time i saw a 330 coming from the military parking and going down the runway very, very, very slowly!!! it seemd that there were hundreds eggs on the runway, he did a very good back track and once cleared for take off he desappeared in the clouds still very very very slowly....

it was tha man!!!

it was the government flight!!

now let's go!!!

but...

burn of hell!! hundreds of airliners appeared after the corner and a sequence of many many many planes were before us...vnukovo 3 was dismissed until even Vodkalemonandiceairlines was in flight!

my take off was two hours after my start up request...

carry on a lot of fuel next time you fly to vnukovo and always remember...

CALM

COOL

COLLABORATIVE

(if you can!!)


:p:p:p

YEP
Pretty good for the most expensive airport to operate from in the World.
UUDD I think better.
We find a quick in and out at UUWW is about £2,300 now with an extra £900 for each night stop. Lets hear your horror stories on service and price

Business as usual then in Moscow.

I was there a few weeks ago (non APU), -5 degrees in cockpit. 90 mins between requesting start and getting start.

Spent hours lounging around on board, the other day, seeing as the pax had let us know they'd be coming later. Usually I always accompany the pax into the terminal on arrival and meet them in the terminal on departure, but this of course is a horrifying thought to the KGB that runs Vnukovo, so we stays firmly ensconced aboard ol' faithful. Then: a nervous call from the aircraft manager: 'why aren't you ready?' - the pax had called him to say that they were being kept in the VIP-area because - wait for it - 'The crew was late arriving for the flight and were not ready.' :eek:
What had happened was that the slothful immigration-monkeys had failed to process our crew-passports in time, and we were the convenient (absent!) scapegoats! :mad:

Still better than Luanda, if only just :}

As said before, business as usal. My personal "record" was 6 hrs APU running, pax on board. The reply on: "VKO GND, XXXYYY?" was "STOP TRANSMITTING".
Had to deice,but that really worked after that delay.
The "funny" thing was, that the broker told the pax that it was our fault. So the guy was slowly getting mad in the back, I then had the ramp agent talk to him, as he didin´t speak english. Was nice to watch the ball getting into the brokers garden. He was really chewed by the pax on the phone (and I don´t speak russian...but one could tell what wass going on)

Had a 5 hrs wait in UUDD as well, so thats Russia / Moscow. To be fair, in that case apperently the ATC Radar / Computer broke down.

I still have a very good feeling when leaving their airpace, altough a lot of russians that I met are great guys.

Recently one of our crew was "fined" $500 for not declaring his currency on arrival. The "fine" consisted of the crew member being asked to go by himself into an empty room and leaving the cash under a folder on the table. Has this happened to anyone else?

No!!! but in the past i had to sped my overnight on board because i didn't have any available pages for visa on my passport ( customs require a completely blank page because they put on it a huge sticker!! one trip-one sticker, it's crazy man!!!)...maybe my fault but it was the first time in my life!

Reminds me of a T shirt I saw a guy wear in Nigeria "Happiness is V1 out of Lagos". We need one for Moscow saying "Happiness is Amdor going West"

:p:p:p!!!!

After an uneventful flt, London to Vnukovo, on finals (1.5nm out!) I was told by ATC the airport was closed, completely out of the blue with no warning. When asked when it will re-open they said they weren't sure, maybe an hour, so off we diverted.
Mind you it's nothing like the fun and games I've had in Belarus.....
Happy Days!

Went to Vnukovo in the middle of January a couple of years ago.

We had to wait hours in the handlers portacabin to get our visas issued. The floor was soaking wet, it was -153,000 degrees celsius outside (or at least it felt like it!), it was getting dark, we were sitting on the filthy camp bed etc...

There was no indication of when we would get our visa's as the handler just kept telling us it would be about 5 mins.
Handler "We didn't know you were coming"
Capt. produced a fax from them showing confirmation of our handling request
Handler "Different shift worker"
Capt. "When will get our passports back"
Handler "Before the passport office shuts"
Capt. "When does it shut?"
Handler "It's shut now"
Capt. "Oh. I'm sorry I don't understand"
Handler "They need to open the office to shut it. They will do your visa when it opens and then they will shut it"

Cabin attendant didn't help when she asked if she could have "seasonal vegetables" for the return flight.

Keep 'em coming

Init
As I mentioned on a previous post, get an annual multiple entry visa, we will not go to Russia now unless the crew have them. It does make life a lot easier (and cheaper). These visas are a P.I.T.A. to get but worth it

all concerned

visit www.anyvisa.co.uk

they provide multi entry Russian visa's. Done swiftly, legally at a good price.

Similar story, about 30min left in-flight enroute to Vnukovo, only to be told "airport is closed". :eek:
"Technical reasons" meaning a soon to depart presidential flight. Plenty of fuel so we entered the hold in icing conditions, in the Hawker.

Not a good idea, we nearly ran out off TKS anti-ice fluid and after 45min decided to cut our losses and head for SVO.

Oh well.

Littletone.

hawker what is a P.I.T.A.?

Happiness
 

L'Argonauta.

In the mid 1990's I introduced the original T- Shirt (I think) of "Happiness is V1 at Yuzhno Sakhalinsk" (UHSS). I had them made in Vancouver, they turned out a great success.

I still have mine as warm as toast.

Tmb

Pain in the A:mad:

vnuk 'I learnt about flying from that'......
 

Freelanced for a lovely German mob 2 years ago, Dornier328-100 (ahhhh Dornier!) from Yerevan - Vnuk. Asked the switched on F/O and lovely Belgian Cabin Crew 'have you 2 Dudes got the Visa's for Russia??', Both replied 'Of course overweight Yorkshire man....lets fly!'

Please send Red Cross parcels to 'Why do I still support York City FC?' care of the British Embassy Moscow...

Remind me what the long German word for 'BUNG' is....:}

as one said...."Welcome to Former Soviet Union", Russians are from another galaxy, being leaving 6 months over there and flying almost everyday is something to tell to my sons in the future.

Vnukovo
 

As the last post said, try being based there, all the above are standard procedures, just give up on reason, sit back and allow yourself to be caramelised, and take the money, ..................if they pay you! then run the gauntlet trying to leave with it.:{