On Friday, October 3, 2003, at 02:17 AM, Alireza Alivandivafa wrote: > 1. LHR (not yet, only to STN, noticed that British customs agents ask > a lot > of questions to vacationing students, even yanks with blue passports > comming > in on FR with obvious Western US accents). I have not been there, but > it seems > like it would be a bit of a mess. I've been to Heathrow many, many times (mostly T3 and T1), and while it is a complete mess in terms of landside traffic flow and ATC and gate contention, the terminals are very nice inside, with good shops and restaurants, at least in T3 where I have spent the most time. I've only been to T4 once (not as a passenger), and don't remember if I've been to T2. It's a spotter's paradise, of course, since it seems to have the greatest variety of airlines and aircraft from all the countries of the world. Only JFK is a rival there, maybe MIA and LAX. It's one of my favorite places, and even if I'm not flying in/out of there I try to stop it to visit. > 4. SVO: Not been there, but I know 3 things. The only way to get > through > security lines in less than 2-3 hours is to pay a company to > "pre-clear" you. > They place is dank, dark and dirty. Finally, as BA (and quite > possibly soon > LH) have shown, you can get great service out of Domdedovo Airport, > which has > its own rail link and a much better setup. I've been through SVO twice, and really it was not that bad. The security lines were not particularly long, nor was passport control/customs on entry. I had heard all these horror stories about stolen luggage, demands for bribes, etc., and none of them were true. There were normal shops and eating places. Compared to the rest of Moscow, it was pretty clean and modern. The one funny thing was that when I checked in at Swissair (I was going to Geneva), they gave me a boarding pass printed on Aeroflot stock, and until I actually saw the plane I thought that maybe the Swissair ticket I had was actually a code-share on SU. (In really it was just that SU is...was...the ground handler for Swissair at SVO.) -- Michael C. Berch mcb@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx