FlightGlobal.com
Home
Premium
Archive
Video
Images
Forum
Atlas
Blogs
Jobs
Shop
RSS
Email Newsletters
You are in:
Home
Aviation History
1964
1964 - 1607.PDF
884 FLIGHT International, 28 May 1964 AIR COMMERCE . . . Left, taxying in at Sheremetevo Airport, past an SAS Caravelle and two Aeroflot Tu-IO4s Right, Pakistan International Airlines Boeing 7ZOB during its Moscow turnround, with Aeroflot 11-18 in foreground PIA TO OSCOW " •MJELCOME aboard Flight PK 710 of Pakistan International jgjg Airways Great People to Fly With" the captain intoned affably as our Boeing 720B taxied out at Heathrow. It was the inaugural flight of PIA's London - Moscow - Karachi service—a Great Occasion to be In On, as the airline's copywriters might have phrased it. At present PIA have five flights per week each way between Karachi and London, of which one each way is flown via Moscow, with an intermediate stop at Frankfurt. The four other services are routed via Geneva (or Frankfurt and Rome), Beirut and Teheran. The overall London - Karachi journey time is approxi- mately 12Jhr via Moscow, compared with 12hr via Geneva and 13£hr via Rome. Leaving London (Heathrow) at 10.30 p.m. on Sunday nights, the London - Moscow service is scheduled to take lhr 15min, for the first leg to Frankfurt. On the inaugural flight on May 10 this gave all too little time to absorb the champagne buffet, two folders of PIA literature (including an English-Russian phrase book) and to appreciate the carnations with which we were literally buttonholed by the magnificent PIA hostesses. Few of us had visited the Soviet Union before, and so a modicum of language tuition was in order. We thumbed through the phrase book provided, mentally storing such nuggets as "we should like to see an amateur talent performance at a collective farm," "Where can I see in action a cotton-picking machine?", "I have come with the British delegation for the May Day celebrations (to celebrate the anniversary of the October Revolution)," and "How is labour- consuming work mechanized on the dairy farms?" The three-hour flight from Frankfurt, via Prague control zone; a two-hour advance into local time; and we were taxying in between the tall trees, the II-18s and Tu-104s at Sheremetevo Airport, Moscow, at 5.40 on a Monday morning. The idea of 5.40 on a Monday morning was in itself bizarre enough, but stranger things were to come. Two single-storey passenger-processing wings, one for those entering, the other for those departing, flanked the modest, well- worn terminal building. "HERE," a notice proclaimed, "the delegations and passengers with diplomatic passports are registered." This was not for us. We handed our passports in, completed cus- toms declaration forms, and read another notice which said; "BEFORE getting your passport it is necessary to pass through the customs control." The notice omitted to add that it was necessary also to stand around for over an hour before receiving back our passports and being allowed to pass into the terminal-building restaurant and face our first Russian breakfast of eggs, cheese and cream puffs. Two hours and 15min after taxying in, we boarded the coach that was to take us to the city and the Ukraine Hotel. Britain's lead in passenger-handling delays, it was clear, was being seriously challenged. For the western tourist, Moscow is a hypnotic mixture of history and modern achievement, summed up in two examples by the Kremlin and the USSR Exhibition of Economic Achievement respectively. But the incidental trappings of tourism—the hotel service, the airport formalities, the Intourist arrangements for BY KENNETH OWEN "FLIGHT INTERNATIONAL" PHOTOGRAPHS group activities—are handled with an inflexible and time-wasting inefficiency that many visitors will find frustrating. It is unlikely that PIA will generate much new traffic on the London - Moscow sector, but doubtless many of the airline s London • Karachi passengers will take the opportunity of breaking their journey for a few days in Moscow to see something of the communist capital. The new service will appeal particularly to those travelling from western Europe to the Far East; the London - Karachi sector can be flown in about the same time as the "con- ventional" route but with only two stops in place of the conventional three (Geneva, Beirut, Teheran) or four (Frankfurt, Rome, Be;™1' Teheran). PIA's link with China has already been described (Flight International, May 14 and 21); these two new PIA services have given the airline a useful route between Moscow and Peking. One man, at least, had no need of the English-Russian phrase book thoughtfully provided by PIA on the inaugural occasion, tie was the Aeroflot navigator, one of whom is carried on all London - Moscow - Karachi flights to "advise" on radio communications over Czechoslovakia, Poland and the Soviet Union—and i» particular on the Moscow - Karachi leg. h Next time I fly PIA to Moscow I must ask him. How on eartn is labour-consuming work mechanized on the dairy farms.
Sign up to
Flight Digital Magazine
Flight Print Magazine
Airline Business Magazine
E-newsletters
RSS
Events
