Quick comments on travelling to Perm

Quick comments on travelling to Perm

Our travels took us from the outback of Australia to the "Gateway to Siberia", as you can imagine that involved a lot of travel.  A couple of quick comments and observations about getting to Perm.

The direct Lufthansa flight from Germany was not an option for us - we arrived in Russia via Moscow both times we travelled via Helsinki on Finnair.

S7 (the former Siberian Airways) is now a One World partner, and has pretty darn good service. The staff at the gate and onboard understood English. S7 flies from Domodedovo, the "nicer" of the two airports in Moscow. The meals were warm, and the coffee and tea pots were impressive on the plane.

Aeroflot serves Perm out of the Sheremetyevo airport in Moscow. Their terminal at the airport is new and quite nice. The staff spoke and understood English. The planes weren't quite as nice as S7's (about on par with my recent United experiences in the states), but the flight wasn't bad. Finnair and Aeroflot code share a number of flights.

Finnair is a great airline and was the cheapest flights we could find that used the One World Alliance frequent flyer program. I would recommend that you skip the Reindeer soup however - it bloody aweful!

The airport at Perm is interesting to say the least - especially when you land and it's -40C outside! Regardless the weather, they still put you on a bus for a 30 second ride to the door of the terminal - you could walk faster than bus ride process. The airport is split between the civilian side and the Air Force side - a close look out the window will reveal several of Russia's finest fighter aircraft.

There is good train service from Moscow to Perm, which was an option we considered but didn't do becasue of time constraints.