Aeroflot has become customer-oriented?

[LeBlanc, Ronald]

My tongue-in-cheek comment about passengers no longer applauding -- much like the point of the amusing NYT piece itself (about current efforts undertaken by Aeroflot to repair the poor reputation for customer service that it had acquired during the Soviet era as a state-operated carrier) -- was made to remind old timers (those of us who started studying and visiting Russia during the Brezhnev years) just how unimaginable it would have been back then to think that some day Aeroflot flight attendants would be receiving training on how to be friendly and courteous to their passengers.

I was generalizing from my own personal experience about white-knuckle landings (during one of them, passengers were crossing themselves and wailing loudly while steamy vapor filled the fuselage . . . picture the scene of the emergency landing in the final Seinfeld episode).  Perhaps I simply flew on the wrong Aeroflot flights, but I had never witnessed passengers applauding a landing before.

I certainly was not trying to be negative about the current, post-Soviet Aeroflot, which clearly has made some remarkable improvements since it now must compete with other carriers for business.

Indeed, the whole point (of both my sarcastic comment and the NYT piece) is that today's Aeroflot is no longer the old Aeroflot it was once (your parents' or even your grandparents' Aeroflot).

That's all.

Pépère LeBlanc

________________________________________
From: SEELANGS: Slavic & East European Languages and Literatures list [SEELANGS at LISTSERV.UA.EDU] on behalf of William Kerr [wdk.ist at GMAIL.COM]
Sent: Sunday, November 03, 2013 5:41 AM
To: SEELANGS at LISTSERV.UA.EDU
Subject: Re: [SEELANGS] Aeroflot has become customer-oriented?

Dear passengers :)

Why are people so positively negative about Aeroflot? Their prices to/from European capitals are very competitive, their planes new (Airbus and Boeing on most international routes) and their crews experienced and smiling. Most important is that their safety record in the post-Soviet period is excellent, and they still deliver pre-flight sweets on a fancy tray!
I couldn't agree more with Alexei Bogdandov ... the myths that are created are usually ones started by those with either very limited flight experience(s) and/or those who discover that the pineapple juice is not Del Monte.

William Kerr
Koc Universitesi
Istanbul



On 3 November 2013 12:09, Sarah Hurst <sarahnhurst at gmail.com<mailto:sarahnhurst at gmail.com>> wrote:

Probably Aeroflot prices aren't competitive with the prices of other airlines flying internationally to Russia, so I wonder if it would really be worth taking Aeroflot and going for three days without a visa or getting a visa, staying longer and flying on a cheaper airline.

Sarah Hurst
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