VIE > ODS > VIE

Tour/retour with Air Ukraine International.
B737-500 both times.
Somewhat worn, somewhat dingy.
Once used by some Portugese speaking airline, since some of the labels were still in Portugese (plus Russian, plus Ukrainian, plus a little English).
Stewardesses friendly, some more-or-less good looking. Kind of.

Didn’t like the way they flew, on approach to Odessa waited a 20 or so seconds too long to put out the flaps, visual approach unstable, back to Vienna they did flaps too early and sure put a nice noise carpet over those little villages under the approach path thanks to high power settings.

Odes(s)a airport has the size of a provincial railway station, a single hall (with VERY LOUD LOUDSPEAKERS), which doesn’t keep those selfimportant bureaucratic busybodies from playing “security”. Moreso when going out than coming in. Suspicous about etix. And everybody is dangerous. Takes them an hour what could be done in 15 minutes. Did I mention that everybody is dangerous? Farce.

People say runway there is bad, I’ve seen worse. But the taxiways are *really* bad. Couple of old An-26 sitting in the grass. Plus a Mi-26 (operational I guess).

Ahhh! Almost forget about the “transfer busses”. Like a fifth wheel. Distance between “terminal” and aircraft 40m. Into the bus, out of the bus …

And else? Germans bragging about which blonde they shagged the night before. Blondes looking for well-to-do Germans to shag. Something like that. And they lost against Italy. Soccer I mean. Time moves slowly.