Aeroflot's Turbulent History Retold

Aeroflot: The very word conjures up images of bounced passengers, foul toilets and cattle-like stampedes to get onto overcrowded planes. The world's largest airline has been the subject of more jokes and more horror stories than any other transport service on earth.


But strange as it may seem to the victims of its canceled flights, Aeroflot does have some foreign fans. and one of them, Ron Davies, likes the airline so much he has even written a book about it - "Aeroflot: An Airline and Its Aircraft", a coffee-table book filled with data and drawings about Aeroflot and its planes, which was published in the United States in May.


Davie's research left him so impressed with the Soviet-founded airline that, when promoting the book in Moscow earlier this month, he even defended Aeroflot's poor service reputation.


"I'm aware of the fact that Aeroflot's service has not been up to the standards of the West", said Davies, 72, pointing out that the airline's aim has never been to provide service for the privileged few, but to make affordable air transport available to every Russian. "It's the aerial Greyhound Bus service of the U. S. S. R".


The fact that these days, with oil prices forcing frequent price hikes, tickets on Aeroflot are often beyond the reach of ordinary Russians, is not mentioned in Davie's account.


Davies, whose career has included work in commercial aviation in both Britain and the U. S. , first paid an exploratory visit to the Soviet Embassy in Washington in 1990.


"I said, 'I wish to write a book about Aeroflot'", he recalls. Once in Moscow, Davies told Aeroflot officials he wanted to see "not only the front-line planes at Sheremetyevo", but planes throughout the former Soviet Union.


Davies clocked some 80, 000 air miles in Soviet skies to see the role Aeroflot played as the "only practical form of transport" for some people, such as Siberians living in 2, 000 villages in a geographic area the size of the United States.


"There is no railway, no roads, only some rivers", Davies said. "The only other transport for them is by snow-sled or reindeer".


In Khabarovsk, he came to comprehend the vastness of the world's largest airline: A single Aeroflot division - the Far East Division - had 690 planes there, more than any other airline in the world.


He also visited the island of Ude, the site of famous Soviet pilot Valery Chkalov's forced landing in 1936, and paid homage to the Soviet Union's great aviators at the monument there.


"For me, it was like making a pilgrimage", he said.


He also interviewed Soviet pilots, including George Bidukov, the only surviving aviator of what Davies calls "the era of pioneering flight", who was copilot on Chkalov's flight across the North Pole in 1937.


In text, line drawings and photographs, his 96-page book recounts Aeroflot's early years, flights to the Arctic, the jet age, helicopters, and agricultural work; and features such planes as the Ilyushin IL-76, the Ilyushin IL-86, the Airbus A-310-100, and the Antonov AN-11 - which Davies calls "his favorite airplane".


Davies is reluctant to forecast the future of Aeroflot, now officially subtitled Russian International Airlines. But he is critical of proposals to break up the airline.


Russia, he advises, should learn from America's experiences in the aftermath of deregulation that "if you change a system, then you'd better have a very good system to take its place". Davies also suggests the airline look to Europe, where the trend is toward airline mergers.


"Aeroflot, for good or for bad, is a national asset of Russia", he said.