Travel Notes

Aeroflot Hub

Aeroflot will complete construction of its new air terminal this fall, and move in along with its international partners when the airline switches to its winter schedule, said Aeroflot chief Vitaly Savelyev. The terminal, dubbed “Sheremetyevo 3,” but which has “Terminal D” emblazoned on the building, is shaped “in an image of a swan that protects passengers with its wings,” and will house the SkyTeam alliance in Moscow, sharply reducing the amount of time passengers now spend transferring between Sheremetyevo Terminals 1 and 2, which are located several kilometers apart and are patrolled by taxi drivers charging outrageous fares.

Eventually, a new Sheremetyevo runway will also be constructed, in hopes of easing traffic jams on the two existing strips. For the time being, Terminal 2, which was built for the 1980 Moscow Olympics and is hopelessly outdated, will not be closed, but its passenger volume is sure to drop significantly.

Poll Museum

Mikhail Gorbachev will open a new museum with businessman Alexander Lebedev, dedicated to elections and Russia’s election law. It will be housed in the building of the newspaper Novaya Gazeta (which is jointly owned by Gorbachev and Lebedev), in central Moscow’s Chistiye Prudy region. “I will also write to Gennady Zyuganov, Mikhail Kasyanov, Garry Kasparov, Boris Nemtsov, Vladimir Ryzhkov, and other well-known politicians to support this initiative,” Lebedev told Interfax.

The museum will show how Russia’s campaign and election laws have changed over the last 20 years, how votes are calculated, and the technology that has been used. Lebedev participated in two mayoral elections in Moscow and Sochi, while Gorbachev was a presidential candidate in 1996, receiving 0.51 percent of the vote.

Budget Line

Another Russian airline is vying to enter the budget airline niche. Avianova has received its certification from the Ministry of Transportation, has taken delivery of its first two Airbus jets (previously used by U.S. Airways, according to RBK Daily), and will start flights in September. Avianova will be based in Vnukovo, the smallest of Moscow’s airports and limit itself to domestic flights no longer than three hours. Minimal tariffs will be R250, not including charges and additional services.

Russia’s other budget airline, Sky Express, which initially charged R500 rubles for domestic flights, has instituted price increases and added fuel charges that make its ticket prices comparable with those of regular airlines, while company return policies and flight delays have led to customer service nightmares.

Duty Crackdown

The Russian Customs Service wants to restrict the amount of goods that can be brought into Russia duty free. If the RCS has its way, travelers would only be allowed to bring in goods worth R20,000 ($640) and weighing less than 20 kilograms before duties kick in. Currently, the limit is set at R65,000 and 35 kilograms.

The new measure seems aimed at boosting declining customs revenues and has irked travelers—so much so that the regulation has been removed from the RCS website. Russians shop profusely when traveling abroad, so even the current duty free limit is low. “Now one pair of shoes or a camera would already be too much,” said Denis Daniilidis, a European Union spokesman in Moscow, in an interview with The Moscow Times.

In reality, the duty free limit is high by comparison with other countries. For instance, non-EU travelers to Germany can only bring in (in addition to limits on cigarettes, alcohol, etc.) €175 in personal goods; the US limit varies but is normally $800.

Niko—er, scratch that…

One of Moscow’s main railroad hubs, Leningradsky train station, was briefly renamed Nikolayevsky station by Russian Railways, in an effort to hearken to the pre-Soviet era, when the station was so named. Russian Railways Chief Vladimir Yakunin initially said that renaming the station was part of the company’s policy of “historicism and continuity.” Hours later, however, Russian Railways backpedaled, calling the event a “technical problem.”

The summary renaming had drawn fire from the Communist party and ordinary travelers. Such a renaming would not have “cleaned up” the communist connection entirely, as the railroad line connecting Moscow and St. Petersburg and extending north to Murmansk would still have been called the “Oktyabrskaya Line.” The line was known as “Nikolayevskaya Line” until 1923, when it and the station were renamed to honor the October Revolution (which by that time was already being celebrated in November, but that’s another story).

Russian Railways, struggling financially due to declining rail travel, paid consultants to evaluate the proposed name change; historians at the Russian Academy of Sciences called a return to the old name “historically just.”