How not to encourage foreign companies

A friend of mine, whose name I can't use for reasons which will become obvious, had to travel by way of Moscow recently. Unfortunately for him, he'll have to travel there again. He's not likely to be looking forward to the opportunity, however:

On [date] I booked flights from Kiev (Ukraine - not Russia) to Minsk (Belarus - also not Russia) through Moscow on Aeroflot. The email confirmation made no mention of any requirement for transit visas but when I collected the ticket from the Aeroflot desk [at a western European airport a week later] I asked if I need one and was told not, provided I had a valid Belarussian visa, which I did.

Some days later I was in Russia on a single entry visa and, on leaving for Kiev, again checked whether I needed a transit visa for my Kiev-Minsk flight and was assured I did not.

[Two weeks later] I lectured in Kiev and then caught the first of my Aeroflot flights.

On arrival in Moscow en route for Minsk I went to the transfer desk and was told to go Immigration. When I got to the head of the queue I was told to go to the transfer desk, who in turn sent me back to Immigration, who told me that I did need a transit visa.

After making me wait for an hour they produced an Aeroflot official who escorted me to the Russian Consular Office on the airport who issued me with a transit visa — it was now forty minutes before the flight to Minsk left from the other terminal, five road miles away. Instead of taking me to the aircraft Aeroflot told me to take a taxi round the perimeter.

Having queued at an ATM for roubles and found a taxi driver who spoke enough English to understand what I wanted I arrived at the other terminal to find that the officials who were supposed to have been alerted to my arrival had not been — and by the time they agreed that they should be helping me the flight to Minsk had long gone.

There was no flight to Minsk arriving before midday, and my lecture was at 09:00, so about 100 people from all over Belarus had to be sent home without hearing it.

Since there was now no point in going to Minsk I asked Aeroflot to rewrite my ticket back to Kiev, where my flight home was to depart (with no convenient flights from Minsk I had booked an overnight train back to Kiev to fly home via Amsterdam from there). There were no seats available until the following day but that would still have enabled me to make my connection.

So I found myself a hotel near the airport and waited.

[The next day] I checked in on the flight to Kiev and at Immigration was told that my transit visa had only been valid for two hours and that because I had not caught my flight I was criminally guilty of illegally remaining in Russia and would be fined $2,600. When I objected that I had not been issued with a visa in time to catch the flight and enquired what I should have done I was sent to an expensive hotel, which took my credit card for B&B but would not accept it for meals, nor, because I was an "illegal immigrant", would it change my money. So eating ceased to be an option, and my "No refund, no alteration" ticket to Amsterdam from Kiev died unused.

I was told that I could not leave Russia until [my country's embassy] had made a formal diplomatic apology to the Russian Foreign Ministry, and they told me that as it was a holiday weekend there was a real risk that this could take a week. Fortunately it did not and I was told at 16:00 on the [following day] that I must leave Russia by 20:00 or face the same problem again. Of course I did not have a flight booked so I had to find a flight in the time-frame with an available seat. This was not cheap — but I made it to Amsterdam where I discovered that my electronic ticket, which I had not seen because the only hard copy was handed to Immigration and not returned to me, was to Brussels as its final destination, not [my actual destination].

On Schipol I received all the help and consideration which, if I had had one tenth as much in Moscow, would have had me to Minsk in time and the audience not disappointed. KLM, the airline for the last leg, although it was not their fault reissued the ticket to the correct destination without charge and provided a car to take me to the aircraft to avoid my having to run to make the connection.

As I write my luggage, which did make it to Minsk, is still impounded by the Belarussian authorities awaiting my arrival in person to claim it. It will be interesting to see if I can ever pry it loose.

A pretty crummy experience, as you can see, and yet in a disturbing way . . . successful. In the sense that, at several points along the way things could have gone much worse. This sort of thing isn't by any stretch of the imagination new: travellers were reporting similar problems with Russian/Soviet officials in the 1950's and 1960's. The sad thing is that clearly little has improved since then.