Greetings to everyone!
I would like to warn the reader right away that this review is offered in a somewhat unusual format. Firstly, chronology will dance in it, and secondly, it will cover two flights at once. But they are not the heroes of the occasion.
Its purpose is to share information about the new terminal. The flights associated with it (arrival and departure) have a secondary role and are only a logical addition. Moreover, for the Russian reader, Rossiya Airlines and Sheremetyevo Airport are quite familiar brands, described far and wide in the vastness of this resource, and it is unlikely that I will be able to introduce any new and extraordinary details. Therefore, in the current review I will go through the chapters directly related to flights, superficially, noting only the nuances characteristic of this particular flight. Well, I’ll dwell on the new terminal in more detail and try to cover it all and outline it in the smallest detail with subsequent conclusions and summaries.
And I apologize in advance if the text of the review seems too long, and therefore difficult to read and assimilate, but I didn’t see the point in splitting it into two for the reason stated above - the triviality of both the direction and airlines.
Contents
1. Preface
2. Purchasing tickets, selecting seats
3. First flight statistics, road to Sheremetyevo airport
4. Terminal B of Sheremetyevo Airport
5. Flight to Blagoveshchensk
6. Departure point is the city of Blagoveshchensk
7. Statistics of the second flight, road to Ignatievo airport
8. Adjacent territory of Ignatyevo airport
9. Dirty area of Clean area of Arrivals area of Flight to Moscow
13. Conclusion, conclusions
Preface
Not long ago a new terminal at Blagoveshchensk Airport opened. The first test flight was tested on December 31, 2025, and on March 31, 2026, all domestic flights began to operate from it. The opening became pompous, the very fact of Vladimir Vladimirovich’s participation in it (albeit online) speaks volumes.
I won’t hide that one of the reasons (50%) for the flight was pure curiosity - I wanted to see with my own eyes and try out the new airport of the city in which I was born and spent most of my life. Yes, it’s an airport, and not just a terminal, because in addition to the latter, a new runway and taxiways, which I had never seen before, were also built there. If not for this factor, I most likely would not have flown. There was nothing to do in Blagoveshchensk, but on the other hand, in Moscow there were six days in a row of “doing nothing,” so it was decided to fly.
At the end of 2025, Blagoveshchensk Airport, for the first time in its history, crossed the ambitious line and joined the club of million-plus airports - airports serving more than 1 million passengers. This was facilitated to no small extent by two factors: the commissioning of a new runway capable of receiving all types of aircraft without restrictions, as well as the arrival of wide-body aircraft in this direction on a regular basis. Yes, the wide-body fleet periodically visited Blagoveshchensk earlier (Transaero and Russia on Boeing-767, VimAvia on Boeing-777-200 and rare charters on A-330), but then there were weight restrictions.
Currently, Rossiya Airlines flies from Moscow on this route with two types of aircraft: Boeing 777-300 and Boeing 747-400. VietJet Air, which arrived in Blagoveshchensk in the middle of last year and operates three flights a week to cities in Vietnam, also played a role in the growth of passenger traffic.
But it seems to me that Ignatyevo Airport has already reached its peak point in passenger traffic growth (by the way, by the end of 2025 it showed the greatest growth among Russian airports in percentage terms) and I don’t think that in 2026 it will jump even higher.
History of buying a ticket, choosing seats
On the Aeroflot website 20 days before the trip for my dates - and this is a departure from Moscow on April 30 and a return from Blagoveshchensk on May 5 - the so-called flat fares fortunately appeared. The price for two was 66 thousand rubles (we flew together). Unfortunately, on these dates Boeing 777s were installed, which I have flown quite a lot in my life. After a long break, I wanted to try out the outgoing star of aviation, the Queen of the Skies, which I last flew in 2013.
Upon purchase, you could immediately purchase additional seats, but it was decided to leave this matter for later:
In booking management, in addition to selecting seats, you could order a certain type of meal. A total of 14 types are available:
By the way! This gave me an idea. Six months earlier I flew with GulfAir, where there was a similar option and fruit meals were chosen on a couple of segments. In fact, in addition to the fruit one, the regular one was also served. Those. it did not replace it, but served as an additional bonus. Keeping this fact in mind from the recent past, I called the Aeroflot call center and asked - does this also work for you? This is an unusual question, so the girl operator only clarified what kind of flight I was on and asked me to wait, leaving me to listen to music, and she switched gears to clarify the question. When she returned about three minutes later she said - alas, no. On your outward flight you will receive dinner and a light snack, and on your return flight you will receive lunch and a light snack. When choosing your preferred meal type, it will replace the first meal (i.e. dinner or lunch) on both flights, and a light snack will be provided for all passengers.
Realizing that you can’t really get enough of fruit, I decided not to experiment. Although I assume that even if you choose a fruit type of food, you will be treated to a regular meal during the flight. Perhaps it wasn’t supposed to happen on board GulfAir either, because we were not served two types at the same time, but first they brought the fruit one and after 15-20 minutes, during the main distribution, they served the regular one. Probably, they simply forgot that they treated them to fruit.
Two days before departure, I went to “my booking” on the Aeroflot website to inquire about the availability of seats. I was quite surprised that approximately 80% of the seats were already taken. Moreover, only four or five rows at the very end of the cabin remained unoccupied by the window. This is what it looked like:
However, the order of the purchased seats did not seem random. It was strange that some parts of the seats alternated between "occupied" and "vacant" blocks. There was an assumption that the airline left only a portion of the seats for redemption. To check my version, I called the airline’s hotline, where they answered that the seats marked with crosses on the diagram were indeed purchased. Well, if so, I chose seats 56A and 56B. A warning loomed that reservations must be paid in 36-odd hours. Logic and simple mathematical calculations showed that the payment time would expire exactly one day before departure. And also at the moment online registration opens, when the choice of seats becomes free.
Out of curiosity, I decided to check the availability of available seats on the return flight, which was scheduled to depart in a week. And then a surprise awaited me: the seats were “sold out” (now I’m putting this word in quotation marks) in approximately the same blocks as on the flight there:
It became obvious that some of the seats on there and back were not purchased, but were simply blocked for purchase. The operator simply voiced the information as it is presented on the interior diagram on the website.
The next day, about an hour before online registration opened, I canceled my unpaid seat reservation. Over the past 24 hours, the pattern of available/occupied seats has remained virtually unchanged. That is, in the rear part of the cabin on the left side, several rows remained free. I was counting on the seats on the left side, since when landing in Blagoveshchensk a beautiful view of the city center and the neighboring Chinese city of Heihe opens up (provided that the board will approach from the south).
When online registration opened, many of the same crosses of already occupied seats remained. Most likely, some of the places remained blocked. Not having much choice, I quickly took 54A and 54B:
After registering, I returned to the page with the choice of seats. Only 5 minutes had passed since it opened, but there were practically no empty seats left in the rear compartment by the window. But in the middle rows there were no people willing to fly:
In the front compartments, by the way, there was also no choice. With the exception of the "comfort" zone, the choice of seats in which was available directly at the airport at the counter:
On the return flight one day before departure, we also checked in online, choosing the same row 54, this time on the right side, N and K.
Flight Moscow - Blagoveshchensk, statistics: Flight SU6255, Boeing 777-300, RA-73280, scheduled departure at 22.45, arrival at 11.40, planned flight time 6 hours 55 minutes. In fact, departure was at 23.08, arrival at 11.29, the flight time was 6 hours 20 minutes. The time difference between Moscow and Blagoveshchensk is +6 hours.
The road to Sheremetyevo airport.
Several years ago, a new and, I think, convenient option appeared to get to and from Sheremetyevo: an Aeroexpress bus from the Khovrino metro station. Its frequency is 10 minutes, travel time is 20 minutes. It follows the M11 toll highway, which eliminates traffic jams. Those. You can calculate the route to the airport with an accuracy of +/- 5 minutes.
Tickets can be purchased both during boarding and in advance on the Aeroexpress website. The cost of a one-way ticket is 450, a round-trip ticket is 750 rubles. I purchased two round-trip tickets on the website for 1,500 rubles.
During the trip on the Aeroexpress:
We arrived at terminals C and B:
As far as I remember, the entrance area at Sheremetyevo always seemed cramped, and this time it was the same.
We got off the bus, we proceed to the entrance to terminal:
Sheremetyevo Airport, terminal B
Luggage check and scanning at the entrance. On the first level there is the arrivals area. We go up to the second floor, to the registration area:
First of all, you need to understand which registration counters to go to. So first look at the scoreboard. About 30 of them were allocated for our flight (however, this is for all flights of Russia Airlines):
We walk past vertical surfaces shining with a whole palette of bright colors:
The check-in counters are free, there are no crowds of passengers. Without any queues, we check in our luggage:
In return we receive printed boarding passes and go down to the first floor to have dinner in a cafe. After sitting there and leisurely eating, we headed to a clean area, where we walked along the corridors, looking for our gate:
There are a lot of departing flights, so there are also passengers in the corridors, and there are chairs where you can sit to wait not enough.
It was almost dark outside the windows. Pressing the camera to the glass to minimize reflections, the lens captured several sides - mostly dressed in Aeroflot livery, plus the Chinese China Southern and, it seems, Etihad were spotted:
Our gate turned out to be not in the main hall, but on a level below - where they take buses to board the plane. Here in this place you had to go down the escalator:
We went down and it was even tighter there. Somehow we found two empty chairs next to each other and sat until the boarding announcement was announced. We approached the gate. On the gate board, in addition to the name of the destination, its iconic places are displayed. In particular, in relation to Blagoveshchensk, they posted a photo of the old river station, operating in pre-revolutionary times:
We were the last in the first batch of passengers delivered to board. The bus drove for a long time, through endless zigzags and turns. Here is our board:
Opposite it stood a handsome A350, which had flown in a few hours earlier from Nha Trang and was waiting for its next flight there in a day:
In line at the ramp:
On the plane, flight to Blagoveshchensk
We pass through three sectors to our place:
The cabin is not full yet, but looking ahead I will say that the plane was packed to capacity.
And immediately about the national and gender composition of the passengers. As strange as it may sound for this domestic flight, approximately half of the passengers are foreigners. Of course, these are not conventional Danes or Australians, but mostly Indians, as well as representatives of Central Asian countries and the Chinese. The explanation for this is simple: in the Amur region there is a gas processing plant, which is a point of attraction for migrant workers from all over the world. This can also explain the overwhelming predominance of men over women on board: the first 80 percent.
Sit down in your seats. This plane, like the one on which we flew back, are old people, they are 27 years old. Singapore Airlines' legacy through Transaero. Once he was fresh and cheerful, now perhaps too. But, for example, the screens on the backs of the seats did not work. They not only did not work, but were not equipped with the appropriate software. For the most part, they did not light up at all, but some gave out some kind of technical nonsense that only programmers could understand. This is a significant disadvantage on long flights, such as flights to the Far East from the central part of Russia:
But I was pleased with something else - the distance between the seats. Legs, even men's and long ones, did not feel cramped at all. The view out the window is excellent, the wing is far ahead:
The landing is over. As noted above, all the places were occupied. While taxiing, I photographed the queen of the skies:
Takeoff to the west. Somewhere far behind, immediately after takeoff, a continuous shining haze of Moscow opened up, which quickly disappeared as the aircraft began to turn 180 degrees towards the destination, leaving me to observe the lights of the Moscow region:
An hour and a half later, dinner was served. Fish with rice and buckwheat with beef were offered. The food set when distributed consisted of a casserole with the main dish and a cardboard box with an additional dish:
Each of us took both. The box contained bread, a bun, butter and a small cake. Here's what it looked like:
I'll tell you straight - it's meager. Especially in terms of the fact that there is clearly not enough salad for such a set. At least simple, vegetable. And at the same time, two almost identical products - bread and a bread bun. Together with the second course, it turns out not lunch but dry meat. Salad should definitely be added to your diet. Firstly, it would cost the airline practically nothing, especially one like Rossiya, and secondly, it would “dry up” the meal. It is better to remove one piece of bread or bun from your diet. The situation with dry food was saved by drinks, of which water, a couple or three types of juices, and tea and coffee were offered. There was no alcohol. We took some tea to wash it down:
Now about the taste of the in-flight food. The cod with bulgur seemed a little dry, but the bottom was covered with a sauce that tasted mustard and was quite tasty. I learned about the existence of the sauce when I had consumed more than half of the contents of the plate. If this sauce were poured on top of the fish and side dish, it would be more impressive. But it seems that when forming the casserole, the sauce was first poured in, and the rest was placed on top, which is confirmed by the photo. Black tea is bliss: strong, refreshing, hot. In general, the quality turned out to be more worthy than the quantity, but still not restaurant quality. For some reason, Russian airlines do not shine in terms of on-board food compared to many foreign ones, even African ones, where, it would seem, such components of the flight should be at a simple or primitive level. But this level - simple and primitive, and I think this is an accurate definition - is what Russian airlines are trying on. Although in recent years, on long flights from Russian airlines, I have only flown with Rossiya and S7. Perhaps others have a more subtle approach in this regard. By the way, Chinese airlines also have a similar situation - the food is bland, served anyhow, the gastronomic ratio is not respected (at least over the last 2.5 years, I can judge from the experience of flying with Air China and China Eastern).
God be with him, with food, let's get back to flying. An interesting detail - we took off late in the Moscow evening, but on the flight to the northeast, after two and a half hours (somewhere over Ugra) dawn dawned:
Visited the toilet:
I'm returning to my place. Russia has two seat configuration options on its existing Boeing 777-300: 3-3-3 and 3-4-3. This flight was equipped with a 3-3-3 option, which is why the environment in the cabin did not seem cramped:
Flying towards the sun accelerated the onset of the day. The first glimpses of dawn turned into a full morning in a matter of minutes. It’s already over Khanty-Mansiysk:
And somewhere there we were greeted by the first ray of sun:
The night lasted only about two hours, the morning took fifteen minutes. Eventually, the day began to seem endless. Due to time zone changes and time adjustments to the current location, the clock on the smartphone jumped and it was not possible to determine how many hours had passed and how many remained. 3 or 4? or maybe even 5 already? There were no landmarks on the ground - only snow-covered hills and fields, which also made it difficult to even roughly understand where we were flying. Then I figured out how to find out how much time had passed since the start of the flight - the last message in the telegram was received at the moment of takeoff and this time did not jump, but changed in exact accordance with the time zone.
Let's turn our gaze back to the ground. Here we are flying over the Katanga region of the Irkutsk region, which showed itself to be partially snow-covered:
And then the mountains opened up, snow-covered to the foot of the north of the Irkutsk region and Yakutia, where winter was still a full-fledged mistress:
While flying over these harsh landscapes, it was announced that a light snack would now be served. They brought this set, consisting of a cereal bar and tea with lemon (but you could choose coffee or water):
In the southern part of the Amur region, the ground has already been cleared of snow. The Zeya River appeared in the area of This will become clear now. Places began to appear to the eye, let’s call them iconic, looking at which usually triggers nostalgia for past times. Below, on the ground, the locations and areas over which we were flying began to be unmistakably read. To do this, I didn’t even need to compare the places on the map that were visible during the landing process, unlike, for example, the return flight, when during the descent I only recorded the picture, but determined the location on the ground on the map. I saw a painfully familiar three-point intersection with a roundabout at the 31st kilometer of the Blagoveshchensk - Svobodny highway, followed by the Zeya railway bridge in the area of I was disappointed, because I had never seen it before during a normal approach - the plane usually flew in this place behind the Zeya River and not in front of it:
But in response to my disappointment, the plane immediately turned a little to the left, towards the river, preparing space for maneuver, which should be a turn. And sure enough, Blagoveshchensk and the Zeya River appeared with two road bridges thrown across it:
And then the traditional turn over Blagoveshchensk, part of which was flooded with torrential rain, and the Chinese city of Heihe. For the first time I saw something new - a road bridge across the Amur River between Russia and China, and two cable car stations, one on the Russian side, the other on the Chinese side:
We turned 180 degrees and reached the finish line. A thin, almost invisible strip of the Amur River opened up to the eye, and behind it - the hills already on the Chinese side. In the hollow between the hills one could see the water surface of Lake Vonyukhu. For residents of Heihe and Russian guests, there is a ski resort, a water park, and restaurants. They say it's a good place to relax. I haven’t been there myself, I can’t confirm:
Landing on a new runway, running along it:
Having reached its end, the board immediately turned around and headed in the opposite direction. For some reason, the old strip, which is located parallel to the new one and closer to the terminal, is not used as a taxiway. Although it seemed that if you laid two connecting paths between them at the ends, there would be no need to turn around after stopping, but you could simply turn 90 degrees to the side. The connecting paths were laid at some distance from the ends, one of them at an acute angle. Here we turned onto it:
We are taxiing, crossing the old runway:
We are approaching the terminal. In the adjacent parking lot, two Ural Airlines aircraft are visible. One will go to Moscow, the second to Yekaterinburg:
The flight is over, we leave the board:
In the descriptive part of the airport terminal I will adhere not to chronological, but to technological order (i.e. from the moment of entering the terminal for the flight to the moment of leaving it after arrival). Therefore, now let’s fast forward 4 days and continue the review from the second departure point, this time – Blagoveshchensk.
The highlight of the city is its location. Opposite is the Chinese city of Heihe and the proximity of China is felt in all spheres of life. The streets are full of Chinese, with the advent of the bridge across the Amur, cars with Chinese license plates began to be seen on the roads - and not only the trucks that were there before, crossing the border on ice, but quite private ones. How they manage to do this is a mystery, because private travelers are not allowed to move across this bridge:
There are stores of Chinese products delivered from across the river:
Sometimes, however, the price tags are confusing. Not by price, but by name:
Chinese beer - a large selection, 20 varieties, no less. By the way, it is sold in regular supermarkets. I brought some, took a place in the Moscow refrigerator next to the Kenyan Tasker:
In a Chinese store I bought a good snack for beer - a pig's ear. Smoked. In the old days, people in Heihe often chewed it, a really worthy thing to go with beer:
In general, if you want to sip on Chinese culture and more, you don’t have to go to China, you can just visit Blagoveshchensk.
Besides the Chinese component, there is, of course, something of its own that the city can be proud of. For example, one of the best attractions is the beautiful Amur embankment. It is majestic in itself, but it couldn’t do without China: firstly, it has a beautiful view of the city of Heihe, and secondly, on the shore the construction of the station of the world’s first trans-border cable car is being completed (the Chinese, apparently, built it on their shore). The best feature, of course, is the embankment in the central part. But during my visit, it was completed to the northwestern end of the city. In this part is the very outskirts of Blagoveshchensk:
But opposite is the very center of Heihe:
If you turn the lens out, then two cities (or two countries) can fit into one frame: on the left is Blagoveshchensk, on the right is Heihe:
What I didn’t like about my visit was that the roads in Blagoveshchensk were very bad, which vividly reminded Nairobi.
Flight Blagoveshchensk - Moscow, statistics: Flight SU6256, Boeing 777-300, RA-73282 (Far Eastern Leopard Livery), scheduled departure at 14.30, arrival at 15.55, planned flight time 7 hours 25 minutes. In fact, departure was at 14.52, arrival at 16.07, the flight time was 7 hours 15 minutes. The time difference between Blagoveshchensk and Moscow is 6 hours.
The road to Ignatyevo airport.
We left for the airport long (4.5 hours) before the flight, since the purpose of the flight is not the flight itself, but an overview of the terminal. I wanted to take my time and have enough time to get acquainted with it. We got to the airport by taxi. For some reason, with the opening of a new terminal and an increase in passenger traffic, a taxi has become practically no alternative way to get to the airport. Why practically? Because the existing city bus route 8A began to run with a frequency of once every three hours! Previously it was once every half hour. I'm not talking about Soviet times, when there were generally two routes, one of which was express. Why then, in principle, is this route needed with such a frequency of service - it’s not entirely clear:
We ordered a taxi through the Yandex application. The cost was about 700 rubles. We are traveling in it:
The road to the airport is 16 km and is currently being modernized. By 2030, it is planned to add one lane in each direction of traffic:
We are approaching the village where the airport is located. The village is called “Airport”:
From the highway turn right and a new terminal building appears:
Adjacent territory.
The taxi took us to the terminal. An interesting detail is that for entering the territory adjacent to the airport terminal building, the terminals that issue entry cards are installed on both sides: most cars in Blagoveshchensk are right-hand drive, even Mercedes and BMWs (we, for example, rented a right-hand drive car and got to the airport in one), and it would be illogical to install them only on the left side of the entering car. Below in the photo you can see this nuance, as well as the prices for parking. For me this is even a plus, since I’m used to right-hand drive (in Nairobi all cars are right-hand drive, but in Moscow I don’t drive):
The facade of the new terminal building corresponds to new trends. To fully cover it, we had to go deep into the parking lot:
The area is divided into zones: car parking; tiled walkways for pedestrians; lawns that have never bloomed with herbs or flowers; additional spaces:
Additional spaces are recreation areas, waiting areas, monuments, exterior elements:
They even set up something resembling a podium:
To add sophistication to the landscape, here and there there are lawns massive stones were brought and stacked:
Old terminal building:
To the right of the old building there is an even older one - the one that functioned from the very beginning of the opening of the airport (the 60s of the last century) until 2010. The intermediate one served from 2010 to 2026, respectively. One of these old buildings (I can’t say exactly which one, but most likely the oldest) still serves its intended purpose and is an international terminal. But this is a temporary measure. In the summer of 2026, international traffic will also be transferred to the new terminal building. What will happen to these buildings in the future, or rather what their function will be, I don’t know:
Now let's get closer. In the right corner, almost imperceptibly, is the entrance to the terminal:
But let’s not go inside for now, but move to the right so that the right side appears to us. It reveals to us a massive triangular-shaped wall with a portrait of Count Muravyov-Amursky, the founder of Blagoveshchensk: the man after whom the Ignatievo airport is named:
Between the entrance to the terminal and the triangular wall there are letters that form the word "airport" in two languages:
Well, now let's go inside:
Dirty area of the Ignatyevo airport terminal
Immediately behind the entrance there is a security check area, which is traditional for Russian airports:
Luggage, hand luggage, electronic devices went through the scanner, we are heading to dirty zone:
At the entrance to it you are greeted by a sign:
And now a nuance that can be attributed to the minus of the airport. What do we usually see on the board in the dirty area opposite the departure point? That's right, the check-in number for the flight. And on the scoreboard in the clean area? The gate numbers are indicated there. This seems so logical that it is perceived as an axiom. Having glanced at the board, I found our flight and saw the numbers - 1-2, rightly believing that these were the numbers of the check-in counters. In addition, the board also reported that they would open at 11.20.:
To the right of the board there was a place for packing luggage, a snack/coffee machine and a toilet:
Next is the domestic arrivals area flights, where greeters, as well as taxi drivers, were milling about, waiting for inexperienced passengers ready to pay double or even triple the price tag to the city:
To the left of the board and somewhat deeper, equipment for self-check-in of luggage was installed:
What if you try? We had electronic boarding passes. A day before the flight, registration for the flight opened, which allowed you to be one of the first among registered passengers by choosing seats K and H on the 54th row. Opening the phone, he leaned the boarding barcode against the scanner. It gave the following:
Well, the experience of checking in your luggage yourself was unsuccessful, we’ll check it in the old fashioned way. Probably the reason was that baggage drop-off becomes available at the moment the check-in counters open.
To the left of the entrance, between it and the exit of the cafe, the name is Brown:
Behind the cafe is the central hall:
Behind the hall there is another cafe, the name "A-mur" and a souvenir boutique:
In the middle of the hall there is an information desk, designed very fashionably. The numbers of the electronic clock on this stand seemed to be painted directly on the wall, but they changed, so the illusion of the drawing periodically disappeared. It looks very unusual
Here, at the information desk, there are kiosks for self-printing boarding passes:
Behind the central hall there are check-in counters. There are 15 of them in total. Three or four were followed by check-in for flights:
A small queue had already lined up for our flight at counters 1-2, but there were no check-in staff yet.
All cafes, shops, and other services were decorated in the same style - smooth, light-colored panels and supports.
From the central hall the stairs and escalator went up to the upper level:
At the beginning of the escalator at this level there is its diagram, also adapted for blind passengers:
Let's now see what is available on the second level. Also machines for snacks:
Airline offices:
We pass along this level:
On the left are the boarding gates, in the clear area:
On the right is a view of the front window:
At the end of this level there are service rooms, a mother and child room and a long waiting area:
On the lower level there is also a waiting area, but it is quite small (this can be seen from the photo above, at the moment of ascending to the second level). General view of this area from both ends:
In the long waiting area, located close to the front windows, you can perfectly observe not only the parking lot, but also the entire space adjacent to the terminal, from which we began to get acquainted with the airport. On the horizon there are hills - this is already the territory of China:
During the inspection of the terminal, a fire alarm suddenly sounded. Over the loudspeaker, they non-stop, alternating speech in Russian and English, announced the need to leave the airport building. But none of the passengers reacted to this - people continued to serenely eat in the cafe, stand in queues for registration, and sit in waiting areas. It seemed that this alarm was 99% a training alarm, since no signs accompanying the fire were felt - no open fire, no smells, no sounds, so no one was in a hurry to leave the building. Seeing such passivity, the airport staff got involved, and people reluctantly pulled out, especially those who had not yet checked in, with their suitcases and other belongings:
We went outside too. Realizing that the alarm was most likely a drill, the passengers automatically headed from the exit to the entrance, where a decent-sized crowd began to accumulate:
So far no one has been allowed back into the terminal. About 15 minutes passed while waiting.
They gave the command to go back in, and the crowd rushed through the revolving doors, causing them to constantly slow down. The staff joined in again, shouting that no more than four people should enter the turntable at a time. Visually, and technically, the doorways accommodated more, so no one heeded the advice. But many at least realized that they didn’t need to touch the doors with themselves and their suitcases, and things went smoothly.
And again there was a search at the entrance. And again we entered the premises of the dirty area, unusually empty. The time had come for the start of registration, so we immediately headed to registration counters 1-2, that is, to those that, as many believed, were announced on the board. We were about fifth in line at one of the counters, and a long tail gradually stretched behind us. It grew and even began to squirm, but registration had not yet begun, and there were not even any employees nearby. Then at some point they shouted that check-in for our flight would be carried out at counters 8-13! The snake instantly disintegrated, the passengers rushed towards the required racks. We also rushed, ending up at counter 12, where we checked in our luggage:
I’ll dwell on baggage check-in in more detail. In one of the recent reviews by another author, check-in counters were also shown at the new airport, arranged in such a way that there is no need to lift luggage when weighing and checking it in - you just need to roll it onto the belt along a small ramp. They did the same at Ignatyevo airport, but they didn’t even have a ramp: the floor and the baggage belt here are on the same level and the luggage simply rolls onto the scales without any effort:
The only thing you need to puzzle yourself with is to put the suitcase on its side already on the belt. For backpacks and bags, the procedure is different - they must first be placed on trays, which are served and stored here, near the belt. At the same time, the check-in staff had to constantly remind passengers of this exact order, since many initially simply put their backpacks on the belt.
This is the first time I have encountered such an advanced baggage drop-off system. I have never seen anything like this anywhere before, in any airport.
We were one of the first to check in our luggage; there were still three hours left before the flight. Many passengers have not even arrived at the airport yet. Initially, the long snake dispersed into short queues at six counters:
Judging by the queue, the national and gender composition of the passengers on the return flight was approximately the same as on the way to Blagoveshchensk - mostly male, among whom there were many Indians.
We rise to the second level - now to enter the clean zone:
Here they check our passports and boarding passes:
And then we go to the control area. I didn’t take photos there because of screaming stickers about the prohibition of photography and video shooting.
We walked through the cylinders where we froze for a moment with our hands raised, hand luggage was passed through scanners and welcome to the clean area of domestic flights:
Clean area of the Ignatievo airport terminal
After After the opaque glass doors automatically opened, the first thing that appeared in the clean area (and it looked unusual) was a small space separated from the main hall, with frameless bean bag chairs scattered here and there. The kind in which if you fall, then it’s difficult to get up and, in principle, you don’t want to get up and go somewhere:
There were more than enough free bags and my companion took a fancy to one of them, staying for some time in this zone.
The security area we had just exited from - let's look back - was completely visually separated from the clear area by opaque glass:
Beyond this area we could see the waiting room and shops:
The waiting room didn't look crowded yet, as boarding for two flights had just finished. And those existing passengers who barely filled the hall were from those awaiting departure for the flight to Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, which had already been delayed by more than two hours. Well, plus the passengers of our flight gradually filled the clean area.
Opposite the entrance to the main waiting room there is a board, which, in addition to information about current flights, served as an indicator of where everything is:
The exit from the security check area was not made to the middle of the clean area, but to its right side. In this part, on the left hand: a couple of souvenir shops, one with a local, the second with an Asian slant, in which no customers were visible:
Also here are the boarding gates for international flights, not yet operational:
On the right hand there was a store and a cafe, a toilet, a smoking room and two exits to landing. Clothing store "Amurmania", also not in demand:
Next to Amurmania is the cafe "Tsingtao Noodle House". There were buyers, although there was no rush there either:
Let's take a look at it right away to assess the assortment and price level. Sandwiches and dessert - at more or less affordable prices:
Noodles that are prepared in front of you - likewise:
They prepare it right here, behind the counter:
I won’t say it’s cheap, but it’s not prohibitively expensive either expensive.
But the problem with drinks in this regard is the problem. For a can of 0.35 Red Bull 400-600 rubles I think it’s clearly too much:
In the middle of the hall and in front of Lapshichnaya there is a small waiting area, both with standard rows of chairs and decorated in a more comfortable style with the ability to recharge electronic devices and surrounded by living greenery in tubs:
To the left of this hall is another cafe, called "Brisky":
We will devote a more detailed description to this cafe below, but for now we will pass it by, now to the main hall, located near the panoramic windows:
I would like to immediately note that the presence of greenery, albeit in small quantities (but the more the better) always decorates the spaces of airport terminals, be it high-class hubs like Dubai's DXB or Singapore Changi, or provincial airports of any country. And I’m glad that the theme of landscaping was implemented in the new Ignatyevo terminal (as well as in the new Domodedovo international terminal, by the way).
Let’s move on to this main waiting room. A transition awaits us to another hall, which we will not enter for now:
Let's now look back at all this greenery, behind which the tables of the Briski cafe are located:
And we will walk back along the panoramic windows:
to the stairs to the second level for the purpose of curiosity - what could be there:
At the top of the stairs one could see the platform on which at that moment the Ural Airlines board was being pulled back:
Here, on the second level, they set up another waiting area, simply throwing the same frameless bean bags that we met at the beginning of the clean zone:
Only a few passengers occupied the soft chairs, the rest were free. Those flying away clearly did not know about this place, since it seemed more comfortable here than at the beginning of the clean zone. From here, from the second level, you can take an overview photo of the first hall, which covers almost everything, with the exception of the clothing store, noodle shop and three boarding gates. Please note that in the distance there is another second level - this is the space for visitors to the cafe "Papa's bar Briski", which we will return to later:
Now let's go to the second waiting room:
The entrance to it can probably be blocked and separate the two waiting rooms from each other. These are just my assumptions based on the location entrance to the international departures area. It is oriented in such a way that passengers, after passing border control, will find themselves in this hall. Moreover, the same boarding gates that are marked on the doors to the international sector are concentrated here. But at the moment, when the new terminal operates only on domestic flights, this hall is also used for passengers on domestic flights, for example, will be carried out through this hall, gates 1 and 2.
The hall begins with a small children's playground. which was organized near the large windows. A small row of chairs was placed opposite the playground - probably for parents to watch their children here:
The children's playground is simple - a slide, mobile "tic-tac-toe", maze puzzles - but it is well done:
[IMG] ID=264053]
Behind the playground, here, along the windows, there are several rows of waiting chairs. Some of them have built-in sockets for charging electronic devices (they are not visible in the photo):
Behind these rows is the entrance to the second level, apparently the same as in the first hall, where there is a recreation room with frameless chairs. But here the entrance to the stairs was blocked, and there was no way to find out what was upstairs:
To the left of the entrance, in the back of the hall, there are also rows of waiting chairs. Some were sofas with built-in outlets for charging electronic devices. Near the wall is an elongated bar-type table for recharging and working on laptops:
The waiting chairs in this area were supplemented with tubs of vegetation:
At the end hall, near the end wall - another cafe, name "Yel":
The end wall was not a wall in the literal sense of the word, but had the same panoramic windows as the facade. The control tower was visible through them:
As can be seen from the photographs above, all these seats, both soft and hard, were free of passengers. But this is only because we were one of the first to enter the clean zone. Just before boarding, the free areas and seats were occupied by waiting passengers, and the phraseology “there’s nowhere for the apple to fall” could be applied to the hall.
Having completed the inspection of the terminal areas, it was decided to find a cozy place to wait for our flight. And preferably not just a frameless chair, which was undoubtedly cozy and relaxing, but somewhere in a cafe so that you could open your laptop and go online. For this you needed Wi-Fi. On the first try, I couldn’t do this on my phone; it gave me some kind of error:
But Wi-Fi was not needed for the phone. But the laptop connected right away, the speed is quite fast, I don’t want to work.
At the Brisky cafe there was an inconspicuous entrance to the second floor without any signs where it leads:
Upstairs we found what we needed - a cozy room designed for organizing the consumption of catering products from the Briski cafe, or simply - a huge dining area:
We decided to settle here until landing was announced, which was at least an hour away. Moreover, from here there was a wonderful view of both the first hall and the platform. The dining area of Many, like me initially, were unaware of the more comfortable area upstairs and ate in a cramped space:
The runway was visible behind the platform. True, in order to photograph it, it was necessary to enlarge the picture through the lens:
To just sit in the cozy room upstairs - it didn’t work out. We had take-out food with us from a Chinese restaurant in the city, and planned to eat it here. But the waitress came up and said we need to order something from them. The menu was right there on the table:
Wow! For a frying pan with fried onions and mushrooms (without meat!) 650 rubles! Burgers exceeded a thousand! Who are all these people eating in the cramped hall below? Millionaires?
Okay, you have to pay for comfort, so we ordered coffee and a bottle of water. I thought I’d get by with three hundred rubles, but it didn’t work out that way:
A bottle of Bonaqua 0.5 for 250 looked great. Which is approximately 3.5 US$ at the current exchange rate. Here even airports like DXB or BAH nervously smoke on the sidelines. The neighboring Qingdao noodle shop now seemed like an example of affordable prices.
This is what it looks like to “just have a drink” at Blagoveshchensk airport, costing 670 rubles:
Okay, let’s assume that for this money we just bought a cozy table with armchairs for one hour:
An announcement was made: passengers of the delayed flight to Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk were asked to come to the Briski cafe to get lunch, presenting their boarding pass. Look, that's what it turns out to be! So it was not millionaires who occupied the tables, but quite ordinary people who, due to a flight delay, were provided with food by the airline.
Our plane, which arrived from Sheremetyevo, landed:
I decided to go down to the first floor and go into the next room to the end windows in order to capture its taxiing.
I passed by the counter of the "Brisky" cafe - there I witnessed a queue, screams, scandals. Passengers of the delayed flight demanded that they be provided with hot meals immediately. The cooks and cashiers made excuses that they did not expect such an influx of eaters and restrainedly asked to wait until the food was prepared. And she really was getting ready, as everyone waiting was enveloped in the strong smell of fried onions seeping from the room where they were fried, causing those waiting to salivate and increase the level of anger. The situation was incited by a colorful menu with all these frying pans with fried mushrooms and juicy hamburgers, which many shook like a fan, demanding satisfaction of the food reflex and splashing the accumulated saliva. To be fair, not all passengers were aroused by the food reflex; I described only some of the characters. As usual in such situations, there is one person who is very dissatisfied, who, with his naked emotions, is capable of inciting a couple more to similar inappropriate behavior. Let's leave them to get angry and hurry to another hall.
I approached the window on time, the plane at that moment was turning from the runway to the apron:
The track of its movement almost coincided with the axis of vision, which is why it seemed that it was barely moving. Having reached the platform, I turned a little to the left:
And then to the right, into the parking lot:
If you don’t stick your face to the side window, but look from the main hall, then, as is usually the case, the plane on which you are departing is parked in an unfavorable position, from the point of view of its photogenicity:
On the way back to my place in the cafe, I looked into the toilet. I pass by the business lounge:
I got acquainted with its prices even before flying to Blagoveshchensk and became despondent. If anyone is interested, you can find information on the official website of the airport, but I’ll say right away that visiting it will cost a pretty penny, and visiting it is more expensive than in Sheremetyevo.
As for the toilet, I found it clean in the clean area. A significant drawback is that for some reason only cold water flowed from the taps:
Below, as we progress through the review, we will touch on another toilet, and there the criticism will be more significant.
In the toilet on the wall there is an information plate with a quar code for collecting information about the quality of services provided by the airport:
Having pointed the phone at the code, a questionnaire appeared:
Already having sufficient information about the airport service (including the arrival, which is discussed below in the review), I left truthful information and provided it with appropriate comments.
I returned to the cafe and sat for some time. I saw a turboprop landing from Tynda:
It has an intermediate landing in Blagoveshchensk. After some time, he will head further, to Khabarovsk.
We went down to the first level. We passed by gates 4, from where boarding to Khabarovsk is about to begin, and 5 - from here passengers will later fly to Krasnoyarsk:
We went to the next hall, from where boarding for our flight will take place. It got pretty crowded here. Many have already lined up at the gates:
Boarding has been announced. At two gates at once - 1 and 2. We also stood in line:
We passed through gate 1. The corridor along which we walked to the jet bridge was wide, divided from the same corridor of gate 2, along which we also boarded our plane, by a glass partition:
Our plane stood on the left:
As we walked along the corridor, new ones opened species. Another board of the "Russia" appeared, and behind it, and generally behind the platform, was an old Yak-40, most likely already flying off:
On the other hand, through the corridor of gate 2, the jet bridges were visible, and further - the tail of Bombardier:
Our board has its own name - Ussuriysk:
And of course, you can’t help but capture the leopard’s face up close:
The corridor ends, we turn into the jet bridge, we go on board:
Now let's go back 4 days in order to continue and finish the review of the terminal.
Arrivals area of Ignatievo airport
We get off the plane into the same jet bridge, which appears three lines above:
From the jet bridge we find ourselves in the corridor:
From the corridor you can look back to follow our board, which took us to the Far East:
Look at A-320:
And meet the terminal building, seen for the first time with your own eyes. The name of the city consists of a large number of letters, especially in Latin, which occupies most of the facade:
The corridor led to the terminal. A clean area appeared with the then-unfamiliar cafe "Yel":
But the arriving passengers did not get into the clean area, but turned left, where they went down one level and walked along the facade overlooking the platform:
A wide corridor led to the next turn - now to the right, from where a wide staircase and an escalator led down to the baggage claim area:
In the old days, when the very first airport terminal building was still in operation, luggage from arriving aircraft was brought to a separate building, or better yet, a barn, which was not heated even in winter! With the commissioning of the next terminal building in 2010, the delivery area was of course located inside, but it was extremely cramped, with a small turn of the only tape. Even at that time, the designers clearly missed the area of Well, now, we can finally say that a decent baggage claim area has appeared at the local airport - spacious, with waiting chairs, a toilet, and vending machines for snacks. In general, the way it should be in large modern airports:
There are two luggage belts. One is short, with one turn, intended for baggage collection for arriving narrow-body aircraft (this is my guess). But the second one - a long one - was twisted into a labyrinth with several turns, like a Formula 1 track - this is what was assigned for our arriving flight:
And now about the unpleasant. All passengers had already entered the delivery area, but the tape still remained motionless. For some unknown reason, luggage began to be handed out about half an hour after the start of the wait. It’s good that during this time only one of our flights arrived, but nevertheless, no matter how large the baggage claim area was, almost four hundred passengers filled it waiting for their suitcases. At this time I managed to look at information stands about the history of aviation and transport in general in Blagoveshchensk:
And also visit the toilet. The toilet turned out to be dirty (or the passengers were sloppy):
In addition, all three taps in the washbasin spewed ice water non-stop:
Finally the belt moved.
Suitcases entered the area from somewhere above, appearing on the belt from a straight ramp (it can be seen in the overview photo of the baggage claim area above). We waited for our luggage and headed to the exit:
In the intermediate corridor - between the baggage claim area and the exit to the dirty area - they installed gates with glass gates and a glowing terminal:
I thought that in order to pass you need to apply something to scan, but when we got closer it turned out that the gates are blocked from opening and passage through them is free. What their role is is not clear. Perhaps something was read automatically.
Behind the gate, automatic opaque doors release the passenger into the already familiar dirty area:
Even if no one meets you, taxi drivers will still be happy to see you. I don't know if they are legal or not. In any case, we needed to take a taxi to the car rental point, so as we passed by, I asked about the cost of their services. They offered to take me for one thousand rubles. In response to the fact that it would probably be cheaper through YandexGo, they countered with an obviously memorized phrase - you will wait a long time for Yandex. Let's go further, to the exit:
On the street I open the taxi app. Shows the price - 440 rubles and the waiting time is 4 minutes. This is what needed to be proven: in all airports in the world, the closer you are to the exit of the plane, the higher the prices for taxis and the more cunning the taxi drivers are.
And now let’s sit on the chronological swing again and fast forward to the moment of boarding the plane flying from Blagoveshchensk to Moscow.
Flight to Moscow
At the entrance to the plane, the flight attendants after to clarify the location (ours turned out to be on the opposite side from the entrance), we were instructed to first turn left, towards business class, and then go to our row through the kitchen:
From the kitchen we now turn right and move through three compartments to our place in the last of them:
Our seats are in the 54th row. And again, non-working or “half-working” monitors in the backs of the seats in front awaited us:
But there is a lot of legroom. One, for example, can be extended, and the second - due to the gentle 3-3-3 layout - can even be placed between the seat and the fuselage wall:
And in general, between the seat and the wall, there seemed to be increased space - it felt almost like in the A-380, a recent flight on which will also eventually result in a review on this resource:
The panel above the head could not be simpler:
During the flight to Blagoveshchensk the contents of the seat pocket did not show. There are instructions and a couple of magazines. I’ll show you now:
I looked through the airline magazine, some articles about distant corners of our country were of interest. On the last pages - the airline fleet:
While I was leafing through magazines, there was a rumble underneath me - they were loading luggage:
An Aeroflot Boeing 737 sat down silently from Krasnoyarsk:
The luggage was loaded, the hatch was lowered to the fuselage, the loading machine drove away from the side. Apparently, it was transferred from the Yekaterinburg airport (or purchased there), since the inscription “Koltsovo” was on the sides:
Fifteen minutes passed, nothing changed. Then they opened the hatch again and a baggage car with some belated cargo rolled up:
Well, now everything seems to be all right. The tractor began to turn the side back and to the left. The terminal building remains on the other side:
The engines started, then we set off and steer under our own power. We cross the old, no longer used runway, on which a huge white cross was painted so that, God forbid, no one lands by mistake:
At an acute angle we turn onto the runway in order to follow it to the beginning for the start:
Now The airport infrastructure has opened up on our side. At this time, only two sides were visible on the platform. The heap takes place until the middle of the day, and after that there are only four or five flights:
Next - helicopters:
We turn around at the end stripes:
On the executive and takeoff:
As far as I remember, taking off north from Ignatyevo, planes took several to the right, but not much, because if you don’t turn away, the flying side will approach the border and fly into Chinese territory. But this time, apparently so as not to tempt fate, we took a sharper turn to the right, so much so that one could see the runway from which we took off a minute ago:
The hills appeared and further on - the Zeya River with the railway bridge that I saw during the descent on the first flight:
We reached echelon. Less than an hour into the flight, winter came again in the north of the Amur region. Some river, in the fight against it, had already partially freed itself from ice:
After another half an hour, lunch was served. As on the way there, they offered fish and meat, and also took different dishes for two. The hot meal differed from that on the first flight, but not much:
The fish this time was not in a briquette, but a breaded fillet. The meat also looked more appetizing:
Opening the box, I saw the same two bread buns, butter and cake:
The cake also looked nicer (on the first flight it was in a package), and the taste turned out to be quite good:
They took sparkling water and apple juice to wash it down:
The toilet looked like the twin brother of its brother on the first flight:
Three hours into the flight, bumpiness began and the need to fasten seat belts was announced. Additionally, a steward and a stewardess walked through the rows, checking the diligence of the passengers.
After some time, another announcement was made, in two languages - this time loudly, clearly and with a claim in intonation: the cabin crew found traces of tobacco smoke in the toilet, in connection with which a reminder sounded about responsibility before the law and the transfer of those who violated the rules to the hands of the police on the ground.
In the absence of the worker. media systems, the only entertainment on board was the window, through which one could sometimes snatch the ground among the clouds and try to determine what terrain we were flying over at the moment, taking into account the time elapsed in flight. Below in the photo, the clouds have parted, revealing the turns of a rather large river, not yet free of ice, with an oblong island resembling a ciliate, dividing the river in a short section into two branches:
I assumed that this was the Yenisei. It turned out to be him, which became clear later when he compared the time of the photo with the time of flight and the track on the map.
After the Yenisei, clouds hid the surface for a long time. Having nothing else to do, I tried to revive the media system by randomly poking different buttons, but these meaningless actions had the same ending - the screen prompted me to enter my personnel number:
The sets of numbers entered at random reset all this technical abracadabra to the beginning.
The clouds parted again and I clung to the porthole again. An interesting observation - the snow had already melted below us, but to the north, about 100 kilometers from the flight track, one could notice that winter was still not losing ground. But countless lakes to the south of the area where the snow lay were still under ice cover. The whole thing was cut from south to north by a clearly visible light thread of the Surgut - Novy Urengoy highway:
And then the majestic Ob appeared. With an even more majestic and beautiful floodplain, on which frozen and melted small round lakes could be seen here and there. From a cruising altitude, this whole picture vividly resembled a liver in a section with echinococci (may the reader forgive me for such a comparison):
And here, far in the north, one could see the border between winter and spring: about 150-200 kilometers from the flight line it was noticeable that the Ob was still covered with ice:
We fly over the city of Sovetsky (KhMAO):
And then again the clouds that met us over the Ural Mountains:
Through 5 hours into the flight they announced that they would offer snacks and drinks. But it completely slipped my mind that they would feed him a second time. Well, how to feed - rather, give him a little snack. On the first flight it was just a cereal bar, so now I was hoping for something similar, but reality exceeded expectations. A large hot pie was served to the passengers. Well, wash it down, of course:
To understand what the filling of the pie consisted of, I did not start eating it from the top, but broke it into two halves. Inside there were a lot of potatoes and what looked like a piece of apple. Well, not bad. But the apple looked too thin and, upon closer inspection, turned out to be not an apple at all, but a piece of boiled (or steamed with potatoes) onion. Phew.. I had to pull it out, and some of the potatoes also crumbled. But my companion’s pie was fine, which means I was unlucky. I ate what was left of the pie; it tasted good. And with tea and lemon, the snack turned out to be an excellent one.
The last hours of the flight passed when the state of boredom had already reached its peak. Finally they announced that the descent would begin in 5 minutes. The moment it began, the plane found it opposite the Rybinsk reservoir:
We are flying over Rybinsk, from my side - a view of the city center:
Having dropped to 3-4 kilometers, we flew opposite the Ivankovo reservoir and the city of Dubna:
After passing Dubna, the plane began to turn to the left, which meant that the landing approach would most likely be carried out from the eastern end of the Sheremetyevo runway. And so it happened. Turning, we passed the intersection of the Central Ring Road with Dmitrovskoe Highway and the Moscow Canal with a lock:
And again a reservoir and not even one. It’s as if the plane chose a trajectory to descend in such a way as to show passengers all the reservoirs of the Moscow region and beyond. This time Pestovskoye appeared and beyond the narrow isthmus Ikshinskoye:
Continuing the turn, we flew over Pestovskoye at the place where the Moscow Canal flows into it:
We went straight before landing. For the second time we crossed the Dmitrovskoye Highway, clogged with a traffic jam towards Moscow, this time where the Rogachevskoye Highway originates from it:
The railway line branches off to Sheremetyevo:
In 10 seconds we will touch the runway:
After landing and running we had a very, very long taxiing wait. They drove by, turned, let us through... In the window, various liveries of aircraft, stationary and in motion, replaced each other as if in a kaleidoscope. In a series of these actions, I lost my orientation and could not figure out which way is south and which is north:
17 minutes passed from the moment of touching during landing until the complete stop. In the end, we stopped somewhere at a distant parking lot (from which we flew to Blagoveshchensk), where the tractor pulled in reverse, finding a place between other Aeroflot seven hundred and seventy-sevenths.
Here the plane finally parked:
After this, for about another five minutes there was the traditional standing of the most leisurely passengers in the aisles, forming a tight snake and breathing down each other’s necks. Then they began to let go, the snake set off:
Sheremetyevo greeted us with fresh air - we went down the usual ladder:
Thank you for the flight, leopard, and long, safe years of life to you, old man!:
Leaving Domodedovo on an Aeroexpress bus, we luckily came across the Il-62M memorial aircraft:
Traditionally, I end the review with the tracks of our flights.
SU6255 SVO-BQS:
SU6256 BQS-SVO:
Conclusion, conclusions
Sheremetyevo Airport I don’t presume to judge, since I didn’t set out to “survey” it, but I’ll still note one nuance. This is, firstly, the tightness of the clean domestic departures area and secondly, the lack of waiting seats. Nothing else, either positive or negative, caught my eye.
Russia Airlines Double impression. And here a lot depends not on the airline itself, but on the current situation in the industry in general. Therefore, it would not be objective to underestimate the value of used sides that have seen a lot in their lifetime. As well as giving points for the very luxurious space between the seats - all this is a legacy of past fat years. But I will appreciate what depends entirely on the company’s service. Maintaining a schedule (in my case) - 5 points. A non-working media system on long flights is a minus. Food is also a minus. The main menu definitely needs to be revised, and not in terms of taste - everything is fine with that, but change the combination - add a salad, remove one bakery product. Here we give a rating of 3. An additional snack - on the return flight it would have nourished us quite well (if it weren’t for the sacred onion), but on the flight there it would have been rather meager. Rating 4, overall nutrition - 3.5. There were no complaints about the cabin crew on both flights, 5 points here. The airline does not have its own website. Or not. There seems to be a website, but the reservation is managed on the Aeroflot website (even if you go to the Russian website, when you fill out the reservation details, it redirects to the Aeroflot website). As it turned out, not all seats are available for redemption, but 24 hours before departure the choice of seats is free. By and large, if you want to fly by the window but don’t want to pay for it, it’s doable, you just need to log in to your reservation in the first minutes of registration opening. Airline website performance - 5 points. The overall rating of Rossiya Airlines is 4.5 points.
Ignatievo Airport A new airport always deserves the highest rating by default, but if you analyze it in detail, you can highlight the nuances where it’s a real wow, but on the other hand, find moments that are weak or require improvement.
“Wow”, where you can safely give a solid five, is the large number of different waiting areas in a clean area and the presence in many places of points for recharging electronic devices. The greens are in a clean zone, a large amount of them is also a solid five. The presence of a cafe for any budget - and this is a plus. Something that does not affect the physical comfort of the passenger, but has an emotional component - high, bright areas, surrounding comfort, cleanliness - and here is definitely 5 points. There are two playgrounds for little passengers. The work and attitude of the airport staff is also a plus.
What struck me in the check-in area (dirty area), with the same “wow” effect, was the way of checking in suitcases as luggage. In order not to raise it at all - I repeat, I have not seen anything like this anywhere, be it Russia, Africa, Asia or Australia. Perhaps these are new standards, a new development of check-in counters, and in the future this will be implemented everywhere in other new airports in Russia and the world. Let's see.
What else? The surrounding area is well organized. It should become even more beautiful in the summer.
Now about the downsides. Transport accessibility. Public transport - city bus every three hours. This nuance does not directly relate to the activities of the airport; rather, it is a question for the city administration, but nevertheless, a fact is a fact. You can only get there by taxi.
Toilets have only cold water, and in one of them the water flowed non-stop. Either the feed program is jammed, or there is a technical issue. It is clear that this is a temporary measure, but it spoiled the impression. In addition, one of the bathrooms was not very clean.
Following. It’s an ambiguous detail, and it can hardly be classified as a minus, but it created inconvenience for passengers. We are talking about fire safety measures. Yes, fire alarm training is probably necessary, after all, it is a test and honing of coherence of actions and so on, but for passengers this is a challenge, because many are not light and rolling suitcases back and forth in a crowd is not very pleasant.
One more moment. The airport management needs to clear the arrival area of This is a legacy of past eras. Currently, this still happens in some African countries, for example, in Tanzania. In modern conditions, taxi services are organized in special offices or counters, kiosks. Yes, I saw a sign at Ignatievo airport that said “taxi, car rental,” but then why do taxi drivers mill about at the exit?
The next two disadvantages are directly related to the organization of the port, so these disadvantages are more pronounced than the previous ones.
The first is a long wait for luggage after the flight. I had no information about the reason for the delay, just as, in principle, passengers were kept in the dark and were not even announced about the delay, including not apologizing. If this there was, of course, a delay. But if this is the local norm, then expecting so much baggage at a small airport is nonsense.
Second, it is necessary to bring the information on the board in accordance with generally accepted standards - in the dirty area, the board always and everywhere indicates the NUMBERS OF CHECK-in counters, and not the numbers of the boarding gates! and, in principle, throughout the entire terminal, I did not see installations for free drinking water supply. For old and provincial terminals this is not critical, but standards are changing and nowadays more and more airports have this option, and even more so, newly built ones are simply required to have devices for access to free drinking water. Why this was not provided for by the project is not entirely clear.
Let’s add/minus all the criteria, wipe away the drool over the novelty, comfort and convenience of the clean area and probably come to an overall rating of the new terminal - 4 points. And what pulled the overall score down were, rather, organizational issues related to the fact that the terminal, being new, had not yet been properly “run in” (long waits for luggage, distorted designation of gate numbers/check-in counters, unbalanced taps in the toilets). Having solved these problems, the rating for the terminal will definitely become 5.
I’ll conclude this and ask you to be lenient if you are bored with too long text!
See you on new directions!
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