Further to my previous post about Chelsea and Roman Abramovich, I read last week that Manchester United had dropped its sponsorship deal with Aeroflot.
Perhaps I’m living in the past, or perhaps it’s the Cold Warrior in me, but Aeroflot would not be my first choice of airline even in peacetime.
To be fair times have changed and so has the Russian carrier which has become a very different company in the post Soviet era.
According to the Telegraph (Aeroflot: from world's deadliest airline to one of the safest in the sky, February 2016) ‘its fleet now consists almost exclusively of Airbus and Boeing aircraft, including 777s and A330s, both rated among the safest models by AirlineRatings.com.‘
Nevertheless it’s hard to give up deep-rooted perceptions and I grew up at a time when Soviet-era aircraft had a poor reputation for safety.
The problem was, unless you were an expert and had the facts, no-one really knew.
The general public would read about the occasional crash but the Soviet authorities appeared to keep their cards to their chests and there was an assumption in the West that other ‘incidents’ involving domestic flights within the old USSR may have been hushed up.
Whether that is true or not I don’t know but I do know that during the Cold War Soviet technology lagged way behind that of the West.
In addition, national pride and a secretive culture probably meant that many ‘mishaps’ were never reported or publicly admitted.
When I visited Moscow in 1981 the tour group I was with was due to visit something called the Exhibition of Economic Achievements. However, on the day of our pre-arranged visit we were informed, officially, that the exhibition was closed for routine maintenance.
Unofficially our loose-lipped Russian tour guide let slip that the previous night part of the roof had collapsed on the self-styled Exhibition of Economic Achievements and we were left to conclude that the authorities wouldn’t admit it because it was seen as a national embarrassment.
(In Britain of course we would have found it quite funny and ironic.)
I can’t remember if the trip was rescheduled to later in the week, when the damage had been repaired, or whether it was during a completely different excursion, but one memory I have of that trip was seeing a Soviet space capsule from the 1960s.
As we know the Soviets beat the USA into space and it was only later that the USA caught up and became the first nation to land men on the moon.
You might think that the technology and equipment the two superpowers used was much the same. From what I’ve seen that wasn’t the case.
When I subsequently visited Washington for the first time in 1983 I saw a similar period (ie late Sixties) US space module.
The difference was like night and day. In terms of design and technology the 1960s US space craft looked years ahead of its Soviet rival.
Credit to the bravery of all the astronauts and cosmonauts involved, but I take my hat off to the Russian cosmonauts who made it into space (and back) in what I can only describe as a rocket-fuelled bath tub.
I mention this because the war on Ukraine is once again casting a spotlight on Russian technology and equipment, much of which is said to be old and out-dated, especially the tanks and their tyres.
Whether that will save Ukraine and its heroic population from total devastation remains to be seen but here’s hoping.
PS. Funnily enough, despite my outdated reservations about Aeroflot, I have fond memories of the reaction of Aeroflot staff when I organised a demonstration in their central London travel agency in 1983.
We were protesting in support of the Soviet dissident Andrei Sakharov who had been sent into internal exile in 1980.
The police were called to remove us but the Met was in no hurry and it took officers 30 minutes to arrive.
When I asked them why it took so long (the nearest police station was just around the corner) I was told the Aeroflot staff had said we “seemed like nice people” so there was no need to rush!