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Experiences with Russia

@WhiskeyPapa, it looks like you are luckier than me. I called them several times and never got through past the answerphone.

LKBU (near Prague), Czech Republic

Did not get a response yet but am standing by and lucky with you guys!

EDLE, Netherlands

I’ll call them tomorrow & ask what’s up.

Tököl LHTL

I did now get a response and provided them with an answer and some more questions. Lets see how this will go. :-)

EDLE, Netherlands

From personal experience:
1. Fly into Russia IFR. If you cant make the MEA on the airways by the border crossing points, you’re gonna have issues. Even if plane is IFR capable, but no presurisaiton, and cannot reach MEA on the airways, you will need to re-reoute.
Sometimes crossing points into Russia are changed and you will have to modify your route again.
There is no crossing into Russia from Ukraine, and vice versa, although there is no official information on this, crossing from Ukraine via any points is forbidden.
2. VFR across borders only with permission of FSB, takes 2 weeks to even get looked at, then denied. No explanation. I would not even try going VFR.
3. The airport where the airshow is hosted does not seem to be an international airport. You will need to clear customs at an airport of entry. Also, non international airport in Russia means ATC will only speak Russian. The only way to go into such airport is to get a Russian navigator on board to help with ATC translation. Of course this comes at a price.
4. Get a Russian visa. Even crew of scheduled flights are not allowed into Russia without visas.
5. Get a good local agent. Rusaero and Skylink are the best in my opinion for obtaining permits. They can also help with sourcing the local navigators.
6. Having a permit and an invitation helps, but issues may arise. Keep all the paperworks given especially if they have stamps on them. You may need to show them again when departing Russia.

The airshow seems to be geared towards Russian, by Russians. Its a small local event, and does’t have an ‘international’ feel to it.

Good luck with it, and let us know how it works out.

not a place you can fly in but if you happen to be at Moscow, it´s definitely worth a train trip to get there.
Monino

LKKU, LKTB

It did not work out in time. We finally got a response, but hardly an answer to questions we had. Then no response for some days and a demand to deliver all the docs before a specific date. At that time it was too late as I was flying through Mozambique at that time (of which I had informed them from the beginning). Would love to fly to Russia some time, but seemingly it is not the easiest country to fly through/in, even when compared to flying through Africa and Middle East.

EDLE, Netherlands

From here:

Would you please give some more informations concerning your flights to Russia, as destinations, availability of Avgas, fees, entry permits….?

In short: it’s bad.

In a somewhat longer version: as a one-off thing, it’s an “experience”. It’s rewarding of course. But it’s very challenging from a planning point of view. And it’s insanely expensive.

Permits: Unlike Ukraine for example, you can’t really communicate in English with the Russian CAA office responsible for overflight permits. In practice, you need a specialized agent for that. But the cost for that is minimal, relatively speaking. About 100-200 Euros per flight.
Only international airports allowed.

Also, you need visa for Russia, which are also quite a bit of hassle to get. Also, for getting the visa, you need some special health insurance.

Avgas 100LL is simply non-existant at the international airports. Only some domestic GA airstrips sometimes have a little bit, usually smuggled from Finland. But you won’t get to these airfields, except when something has been organised by some russian body. A few airports still have B91/115.

The worst part is airport / handling fees. First of all, you can’t really find out beforehand. When you enquire, they will (if you get lucky) just send you some cryptic price list, and you won’t be able to make out which items would apply to you and which ones won’t.

Expect the total fees per stop to be somewhere between 1000 and 3000 Euros.
That’s because a) Russians don’t have any perception of the gradualities of wealth. It’s either yes or no, with nothing in between. Hence, you, as a pilot flying to Russia, obviously belong to the YES group. For a really rich person, a couple thousand Euros is nothing.

Interestingly, it wasn’t all that bad 15 years ago, when I flew to St. Petersburg (which, of course, is a FANTASTIC city). I think it was between 300 and 400 US$ at the time. But believe me; times have changed…

When I flew to Sochi in 2011, it was very bad… well into the four figures.
Let’s face it. Anybody who can afford to fly to Russia will not be taken to the cleaners even if he has to pay 3000 Euros as a one-off. They seem to know that.

Some (very poor scans of) pics of St. Petersburg, in 2002:






Some pics of Sochi, in 2011:








In summary: if you really want to fly to Russia, I suggest you wait for the next occasion when a big group (PuF, AOPA) organizes this. That St. Petersburg event last year was a good chance, I guess. But even then, it will be very expensive.

Last Edited by boscomantico at 31 Jul 19:16
Mainz (EDFZ) & Egelsbach (EDFE), Germany

I can attest that St. Petersburg is a very nice place indeed, they call it “Venice of the North”. You can choose different and much easier approach to get there with a lot of flying (possibly challenging if going over water from Sweden to Finland), the same way I did it this May. I flew to Helsinki Malmi and than took a Pendolino train from Helsinki to St. Petersburg. The train is cheap (under 40EUR) and takes 2:37 to get there very comfortably (it actually goes over 200km/h so faster than C172). You still need Russian visa though.

The place probably looks the same as it did back in 2002 :-)

LKHK, Czech Republic

This was a great experiance of flying, that`s for sure. The details are worth than I thought. Disappointing to read about, yet many thanks for the nice pictures.

Berlin, Germany
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