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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. At each stop, we had to not only exit the plane, but take all our belongings with us. That would prove to be a whole lot of fun with an 18-month-old, winter gear and a diaper bag on the return trip. The aircraft itself was older than I was, which didn’t help my fear of flying. One redeeming grace: The inflight service was absolutely lovely, complete with a silvery Samovar for tea.
Alas, not long after, Aeroflot lost the ability to fly to Sea-Tac International Airport from Vladivostok because the engines on its aging planes couldn’t meet the field’s noise abatement rules. So adoptive parents coming from the West Coast of the U.S. headed to Vladivostok had to fly over the North Pole to Moscow and then back to the Russian Far East on a regional Russian carrier.
But maybe there’s some good news in the offing for travelers to the Primorye region and the rest of the Russian Far East. An aviation blog recently reported that Vladivostok Avia has applied to the U.S. for a trans-Pacific route connecting Vladivostok with Anchorage and Seattle. A spokesman for the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration confirmed that an application has been filed with the FAA and the U.S. Department of Transportation. Vladivostok Avia also needs to file paperwork with the U.S. Transportation Security Administration.
The application is not entirely a surprise since Vladivostok Avia, which has operated mostly as a regional carrier, said in its 2006 annual report that it was acquiring aircraft that could fly such a route. Still, it will be a nice complement to the recent revamping of Vladivostok International Airport. Vlad Avia says it flies 700,000 passengers per year from its base in the Far East. Using some of the resources I wrote about in this post, I can see that it has had a good safety record with only one recent crash: A Tupolev Tu-154 that went down in July 2001, killing 145 people.
The blog report says Vlad Avia will offer two roundtrips a week on new, long-range Tupolev Tu-204 planes. The carrier also recently added an Airbus A-320 to its fleet.
Look for a decision from the U.S. authorities in mid-summer.
As an airline pilot, we carried the insturment approach plates for Vlad. It was the only airport for quite a distance on R220, the northern most airway skimming the Russian border over the pacific.
The approach is so conveluted that we were required to do entries using the simulator. You had to keep your wits about you. That was in the era where you needed a considerable emergency to get a landing clearance there. Perhaps they have improved things, it sure was entertaining back then. John
I almost fell off my chair reading “the recent revamping of Vladivostok International Airport”. I don’t know if you have actually seen it, but I was there at the end of Sept. and I can tell you that it looks like nobody has spent a penny (or ruble) on the place for years. It is really in bad shape. Tiny, cramped and outdated. We flew with Korean Air and it was the only non-Russian airline with an office there.
Updating is a relative term at Russian airports. The work being done at Domodedovo and Sheremetyevo is impressive, although the passenger drop off at Domo needs work. The regional airports are pretty worn looking by any comparison. Yes, I’m sure Vlad needs more improvement even now, but you should have seen it in ‘99.