Volcanic ash cloud from Iceland strands me in Moscow

If you travel often you will eventually have a story or two to tell. In April, 2010 I was traveling to Moscow with a co-worker to visit our largest international distributor. This trip was planned to take us to Moscow, Siberia and the Ukraine. While in Moscow the airspace over the UK and most of Europe was shut down. The EU airspace is controlled by one air authority. Russia on the other hand owns it own airline Aeroflot and controls their own airspace. Our time n Moscow went well with visits to key retail accounts and some sight-seeing to Red Square and the famous Pushkin restaurant. The word red in Russian means beautiful and has nothing to do with the communists.

Since the ash cloud was west of Moscow we were able to fly to Novabirzerk, Siberia without incident. As you might expect there was a blizzard when we arrived in Siberia and several feet of ice and snow was still on the ground in April. When we departed I wanted to buy a souvenir of my visit to Siberia at the airport. I asked where was the gift shop. I was told there is no stnkin’ gift shop. No tourists come to Siberia.

Siberia does not get many tourists and they certainly don’t get many Americans. This gave airport security a chance to turn on some security equipment they had not used for years. Everyone in the security line went though a metal detector until it was my turn. After much chitter chatter from the security guards they plugged in the bomb sniffing machine and made me walk through it. They had a story to tell that day.

Once again with the ash cloud to the west we flew back to Moscow without incident. The next day we were scheduled to fly to the Ukraine. However, the ash cloud had finally caught up to us and the flight was cancelled. We were better off trapped in Moscow than the Ukraine because Moscow would have more options to get us out.

We were staying in the Holiday Inn in Moscow. There were a dozen EU ash cloud refugees that had been trapped in Moscow and unable to fly home to the UK and other EU counties because all flights over the EU has been cancelled for several days. Now all flights out of Moscow to the east had been cancelled and my co-worker and I were now also trapped. United was not sending any planes our way. My co-worker was ill and stayed in her room for two days. I spent two days walking all over Moscow. In the morning I would walk one direction for two hours and then walk back to the hotel and have lunch. In the afternoon I would walk another direction, I fit in with my black topcoat, black pants and black shoes to the point where I was often stopped and asked to give directions. I would just say Ameicanski and they would look angrily at me and storm off.

In the mean time my travel agent is trying to get us back to the USA. We even tried get a flight to west to Bangkok or Tokyo and go home by flying all the way around the world the other way. All of those flights were booked for a week. Untied Airlines said they will get me on their first flight out because I have Global Service status but my co-worker has no status so they can’ t get her out for another week. Now this raises a moral dilemma. Does working for a paint company have the same responsibility as the Marines with no man (or woman) left behind? What would be the reaction at the office if I came home and left my co-worker behind in Russia? Fortunately, I did not have to face that issue.

As I mentioned Russia owns it’s own airline and controls their own airspace. Therefore they decided it was safe to fly way south over Spain to get to New York and avoid the ash cloud all together. There were two seats available to go to Laguardia. One problem was we would arrive after the last flight departed for Chicago. However, if we could get to Kennedy Airport there was one last flight out to Chicago that evening. Book it Danno. We were able to get out of Moscow the next day. As it turned out we arrived in Chicago only two hours later than our original scheduled flight that was cancelled. We were supposed to be in the Ukraine but spent the extra days in Moscow. Aeroflot turned out be a fine ride.

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