Moscow no seats

by Peter Titze

Sheremetyevo airport is by no means a large airport .  Build in the Sowjet area I can still remember it as a small and pleasant airport but came to the conclusion that it is now a nightmare if you have to spend any time there.

On a flight from Berlin to Bangkok I had to spend about 10 hours there because Aeroflot had no better connection to offer. Not like other airlines did Aeroflot offer a day use hotel and it was also not possible to go out of the airport and look around town because a visa would be required. So I thought to spend the day doing some work on the laptop.  No free wifi was avaliable but it is posible to purchase a access card for a commercial wifi access. The only problem was that the initial log in page where the password etc had to be entered was exclusively in Russian language with no English option. Fortunately I found a helpful Russian gentleman who solved the problem in a few seconds.

The main problem I encountered was that there where virtually no seats to sit down available. All the seats which where there where occupied by 'long time user" Some people even sleep there on the seats thereby occupying 3-4 seats at the same time.  The only place to sit down was actually in one of the numerous restaurants which where charging exorbitant high prices. Like a beer was about $ 10.-  Experienced user of this airport of course knew about this problem and brought there own stuff along.  On the second level (where mostly restaurants are located) I could see many people making use of whatever empty space they could find and sitting or sleeping on the floor.

The only positive point I found, that if you are a smoker, is that the entire airport is a smoke as much as you like area with a few sections set aside for non smokers but also no seats available.

The airport has nothing to offer in way of entertainment. There are only restaurants, a few snack bars and lots of duty free shops selling more or less the same stuff rather expensive.

My conclusion; Best to avoid.