Flights
Leg 1: Aeroflot - SU 271 - Airbus A330-300 - VQ-BDE - Current article
Leg 2: Aeroflot - SU 2192 - Airbus A321-200 - VQ-BFX - No Article.
En-route, Check-in & Waiting
You have a few options to take when you are travelling to Bangkok Suvarnabhumi from downtown Bangkok. A bus, train or a cab will do. As a bus would take ages, it was either the train or a cab. I decided to go for a cab to start my journey fresh and cleaner (instead of walking a bit to the nearest metro in hot weather). Having found a cab willing to drive us to the airport, it was a quiet and enjoyable ride in what seems to be a new car.
When I arrived and paid my taxi, I went immediately to my check-in desk to drop off my luggage, however this process was very slow as many passengers brought tons of luggage with them. I think it took around 25 minutes to complete. Dropped of my luggage and went up to security.
A view of Bangkok's check-in area (I wish my line was like the one at Malaysian)
This process is very depending and could vary very much depending of the time you are departing. It was rather busy, but did go in a decent pace. After ten minutes, all that was left was border control… Now border control at Bangkok Suvarnabhumi is very crowded as it is very chaotic and slow-going. Another 25 minutes past by and I was nearly there…. Eventually clearing border after around 30 minutes.
I decided to have some breakfast as my flight departed at 10 am and I did not have any chance to grab some breakfast before. Decided to have some Duck with rice with watermelon Juice for a quite expensive price at one of the restaurants. After that I went down to have grab a frappucino from Coffee World
By the time I finished my frappucino in Coffeeworld, boarding was already initiated. I did buy a connector after my coffee, so I could listen to the movies by my own ear plugs instead of those from Aeroflot as their sound is very very poor and by the time I reached my gate, It was a straight walk down to the aircraft for boarding.
Flight
Meet the Airbus A330-300 from Aeroflot Russian Airlines; VQ-BDE. (My apologies for the reflection of the photos, but the rooms were very dirty and no chance to get a proper line up.)
The aircraft was very full and only one seat was open and I was the lucky one to be seated next to that specific seat (I thought I was, but more to come!).
Pushback was initiated on time and a very slow taxi was initiated after some minutes, which gave me some time to capture those planes around. While I am continue to say that Aeroflot is taxiing very slow, I could give you an example of that Korean Airlines….. On a straight taxiway, it started around 200m behind us, but over a distance of 100m, it was surpassing us already.
While approaching the runway's threshold, we were about number 8 in line, so it took another 20 minutes to eventually be airborne. See below some aircraft rolling for take off like a Thai A350, Cebu A340 & Emirates A380 (which I think is now a very very common sight)
Watch departure video below.
About twenty minutes past our departure time, we were rolling down the runway towards to Moscow with a quick climb to cruise.
The usual stuff was initiated shortly after airborne. Flight attendants started to serve drinks (yet again a very limited choice of drinks), came by to clean and food was being served. The options of today's breakfast were Chicken&Noodles and Fish&Rice. I opted for Chicken and Noodles as fish is usually even worse on board and expected the catering to be better as it was brought on board by a Thai caterer, but once again I was very disappointed. The food was even more worse and close to being uneatable….. Flight attendants came by once again to clean and offer some coffee & tea. Decided to watch some movies during the entire flight on my phone and their display, but found out that the usb in both seats in my row were not working, so my apologies for not capturing more photos (battery ran out)!.
While the first three hours in flight were very nice with no one seated next to me, this free seat became eventually a pain in the ass for me. Multiple PTV's were inoperative and flight attendants started to move those passengers around to my seat as they were insisting to watch a movie. Unaware of the fact that the ptv next to me was inoperative too. One passenger was so annoyed by it, that she was hitting the call for flight attendants several times within a few minutes to continue to attract flight attendants to fix it (no probs to the flight attendants as they were simply looking at the screen, left and never returned either).
Cabin was too hot again like my previous flight, but luckily this flight the flight attendants came by once with a round of drinks.
Three hours prior to landing, the usual service started once again. Drinks were served, Clean up, Food was served once again (Beef with Rice or Chicken with Potatoes), I opted for the beef with rice which was edible, but very poor in taste). Clean up was initiated and coffee&tea was served once again for you.
Landing was initiated with a smooth touch down in Moscow Sheremetyevo. Runway vacated and we were off for a short taxi ride to one of Moscow's remote stands. Unfortunately this meant that we have to go to the terminal by a very crowded bus for about 10 minutes total (as many aircrafts were pushing back) to become in a overloaded security check as I was a transfer passenger.
My apologies again for the lack of photos at the end. My battery died during the flight and both plugs were inoperative/broken.
