Here's some good news potentially for everybody who must fly across Russia for an adoption journey: Russia has announced plans to repair and improve 16 regional airports.

According to a report earlier this month in Kommersant, the Moscow regional government has earmarked up to 55 billion roubles ($2.13 billion) for the upgrades and plans to begin work almost immediately. Almost all of the airports to be affected are in western Russian and the plan seems tied to the overhaul... more

Back in the early days of this blog, I wrote about what to pack when you bring your newly adopted child home from Russia. The fifth item on that list was infant's Benadryl.

Diphenhydramine hydrochloride has a role in your travel kit because it is an antihistamine. As I learned about 10 days ago when my little guy was stung by a bee, it can be a key help in calming an allergic... more

Those of you who are getting ready to travel to Russia to complete adoptions with newly accredited agencies may want to read a new feature story on the Associated Press wire.

Then again, you may not. It's all about Russian air safety, or more properly, the lack of air safety.

If you have been reading this blog for a while, you know the basic issues involving aviation in Russia: deregulation, competition--and too many fatal crashes. (Read the previous posts "How... more

When I went to Vladivostok in November 1999 for my first adoption, you could fly from Seattle to the Russian Far East on Aeroflot. It wasn't a non-stop; I've done fewer stops on most of the puddle-jumpers I've flown. After leaving Seattle, the flight landed in Anchorage, then Magadan, Khabarovsk and finally Vladivostok.... more

Maybe it was a blessing in disguise that more families were not traveling to Russia to adopt last year.

The International Air Transport Association released its annual safety report earlier today, and it showed that Russia and countries of the former Soviet Union had the highest airplane accident rate in the world last year. The association, which goes by the acronym IATA, said that the region had 8.6 Western-built hull losses per million flights, which was 13 times the global... more

Mama mia.

Yesterday, Aeroflot, the Russian carrier that is the backbone of nearly every adoption trip to Russia, made a surprise bid for Alitalia.

After I picked myself up off the floor, I called one of my old college roommates. She had worked for Alitalia for many years (or "Always Late In Takeoff And In Arrival", as she used to call it) and I knew she would get a kick out of the story. And indeed, we had some laughs about the potential for inflight service on an Aeroflot-Alitalia combination.

The... more

The other day, I got to take a virtual train trip across Russia, knowing that some of you may have real train rides while you travel to orphanages. But all of you will spend some part of your Russian adoption journeys traveling by air, and that can sometimes be disconcerting. Even more so when the nightly news contains a mention of an airplane crash in Russia, as happened last week.

I have made three round-trip flights to Russia for adoptions,... more

In part one of this series of posts on Russian air safety, I looked at Aeroflot then and now.

But Aeroflot is just one part of the Russian aviation world these days. When the carrier was reorganized after the breakup of the Soviet Union, hundreds of small regional carriers were created, although there's been some consolidation since. The current list of air carriers operating in Russia on Wikipedia has... more

In the previous posts on Russian air safety, I looked at Aeroflot's record as well as those of the carriers that were spun off after Aeroflot was reorganized. Some have good safety records, and some not.

So what can you do to check out the carrier you will be flying? Ask your agency which carriers fly to the region that is likely to... more