This past year's-end we went back to Stavropol for the Happy New Year celebration. We flew from Vnukovo to Stavropol airport on a TU-134. As there was three (3) of us, my wife sat next to our seven year old, some number of seats behind me. I believe that this airport is an old military facility.
I sat among a French family of five who spoke English, Russian and French who had just discovered that they had relatives in Stavropol and were going there to spend the holiday season.
The ride was quite bumpy, there was allot of turbulence in the air it seemed - there was a big wind blowing.
Well, I got to know the French family pretty well, especially in the final stages of the flight. When we approached the landing strip, the pilot started to speed up, increasing the velocity of the airplane as it go closer to the ground. The nice French woman next to me started to saying what sounded like "Mon dieu...!" and said to me in broken English "I don't like how this airplane is behaving.." And her family started saying prayers together. They held hands and everything. I almost asked if I could join them
.
I tried to look behind me, to see my family but I couldn't see them over the heads of the other passengers, as the engines were screamingly loud.
We touched down and bounced a few times, and we must have traveled a mile or so on the bumpy tarmac, before we stopped.
Then, to top it off, when my wife and seven year old arose from their seat, some luggage dislodged from the overhead rack and struck the chair in front of my seven year old, causing the food tray to come loose and strike her on the head - giving her a nasty bruise. She had really been a great trooper for the whole flight over, and to have this happen to her after we had made it, didn't seem fair.
Fortunately, somehow her babushka had talked and pushed her way onto the tarmac (I had never seen this before
), past the security guards and was there to comfort her after she got off the airplane.
The flight back to Moscow was uneventful, however!
