Naim flight club

I had a flights for Moscow to Vladivostok 3 times back in the early 1990's.  I had flown internally quite a bit;  Moscow-St Ptrbg  Moscow-Minsk etc & was well used to the airline standards.

1st time to Vlad was cattle class all the way & I was very surprised on the friendly good service & it was a pleasant way to spend all day in an airplane.  Return trip was night time & once the meal had been served I was ignored for the duration surrounded by a plane full of smokers,  Aeroflot back to normal. 

2 & 3rd trips were business class & I had no reason at all the complain,  it was almost as good as a good European airline,  I say almost as the food was ??? .. err  ???   plenty of liquid tho' tended to make up for it.   

Not too sure about the plane types,  lets say some were a bit worn, smelly & creaked a bit 

Mike

I am a 15-a-day man, but back in the 1980s I was a very heavy smoker. Being stuck on an overnight Aeroflot flight (from Leningrad to Irkutsk, IIRC) in 1987, surrounded by Russians puffing away on very very smelly fags convinced me that smoking on planes was not a very good idea...

One of the worst was a Soviet brand called друг, or "friend", which came in a red pack with a picture of a dog on the front, which were unbelievably cheap (in Western terms) but shockingly acrid.

I think this is the big plane i was referring to, that had to land at stansted

i think its an AN-124 Ruslan condor

The lovely 1950s Avro Ashton, which never entered commercial service.

Being stuck on an overnight Aeroflot flight (from Leningrad to Irkutsk, IIRC) in 1987, surrounded by Russians puffing away on very very smelly fags convinced me that smoking on planes was not a very good idea...

 

Empathy Kevin  I was a 10-15 a day & gave it up in 1980 

During the 1st month of the cold turkey period I spent best part of it in USSR sharing those smelly Russian "Friends" on a 2nd hand basis. In airplanes especially it seemed that plane boredom caused them to increase the fags/hr rate, Up the front fags & cigars came free with the meal.  

My cold turkey period was just so easy - cough cough - I came to value my lungs & the obnoxious smells smoking causes around to non-smokers just a little faster than I would without that trip.

An A380 breaking through low cloud and rain over our house during the Farnborough airshow last year. Eerily quiet for such a big plane.  

nice picture james

a chilly day for a blackbird !!

IMG_0563 by winkyintheuk, on Flickr

Not a great picture, but it gives an idea of what its like alone at 9,500 feet early in the morning going eastbound over the Rockies.

Cheers Don

I think it is a really great picture. (Would benefit by being cropped from the bottom to remove the thing in the lower left and straightening of the horizon, though.)

Shhhh...I'm hiding

Winky,

Many thanks for your kind words and advice. That "thing" in the bottom left is the nose of the aeroplane, I think. And I must have let the 'plane roll slightly whilst I took the picture !

Any how, i've rotated and cropped as you suggested and that certainly has improved the effect. I really should give myself time to aquire and learn how to use Photoshop rather than the "free" Microsoft Picture Manager I currently use !! The pictures taken with the D-Lux 4 have been captured in RAW as well as JPEG, so I should perhaps start with those and see if I can "improve" my final images.

 Cheers

Don

Surprised no one has posted one of these yet

Save the best till last, Paul !!

Cheers

Don

Folks,

Pardon the ignorance but what's the difference between this one and mine on the previous page?

Ta very much!

In principle Tony, nothing.

I don't know about everybody else, but I don't usually feel it necessary to check and double check everything I might have seen or read before posting on this forum. No need to be upset by this carelesness on my part, but Apologies nevertheless.

Cheers

Don

Have a try of Google's Picasa. A free download and an excellent photo editor.

Don,

No need to apologise. I just thought it was a different model, that's all. I just like this particular plane for its place in british history and was curious to know if there were any variations.

KR

Tony

4 merlin engines.

Not my picture (I wish...) but I'm in the crowd down there somewhere. The occasion was the 65th Anniversary of the Dambusters Raid, Ladybower reservoir.

She's looking better than she was the last time I saw her

Not all planes are beautiful.