So as not to derail another thread, can anyone out there provide some history of how traveling on SU domestically worked? From what little I can recall from what I read, the fares were very heavily subsidized (as would be expected)—the problem was getting a seat and the unpredictable schedules.

Were schedules even published? How did one go about getting a reservation (was that even possible)? Were any sort of (organized) connections offered?

I’ve flown them on an internal flight, but booked thru DL. Fares were likely subsidized for nationals but I’d bet foreign passengers were soaked for their hard currency (Soviet times) or just soaked today. It was alright on a IL-96 flown by an autopilot from 1968 or a pilot thinking he was a fighter pilot. Rough, very much so.

gf

Yes foreigners paid a higher price, but the fares were still cheap. However, only about 10 domestic destinations were published in schedules outside the USSR and doubt these sectors were bookable in the GDS- travel agent would need to book direct with SU. It was mainly a point-to-point operation. Also remember Soviet visas restricted which cities you were able to visit and these were attached to the visa conditions... if you supplied an itinerary for Moscow and Leningrad you could not expect to book a seat on a flight to Kiev, for example. Here's some retro info for you (I've noticed a few errors are, but mainly accurate):
http://www.departedflights.com/SVO83p1.html

Thanks guys.

Now at risk of derailing my own thread thanks to eta’s link.

Baghdad had two airports?

I think BGW was the old airport until SDA was built.

If you search old threads, there was a nice one with your exact question maybe a year ago with lots of stories about people's experiences flying in the USSR, etc.

If you search old threads, there was a nice one with your exact question maybe a year ago with lots of stories about people's experiences flying in the USSR, etc.

Airline tickets were difficult to buy, unless you had very good connections with Aeroflot or with the government or were good with bribing. You had to have a valid reason to travel if you wanted to buy a ticket rather easily, i.e. without standing in lines for hours and / or facing the ever present sign ‘мест нет’ (‘no seats’, ‘no vacancy’, also worked for trains, hotels, etc.) This could be a business trip, a travel to a resort (from the government-allocated quota, of course), or... I remember me and my mother were spending one summer vacation at my aunt’s place in FRU. We didn’t have return tickets and when the time has come to go back home to KHV, there were *of course* no seats available. One of aunt’s friends worked at the post office and she issued us a fake telegram saying that my grandfather died, thus requesting our immediate return home. This worked well, we went to the airport and could take the FRU-KHV flight later that day. Life in the USSR was not easy, people had to get very creative to make their lives less miserable every day.

The schedules were "published" in a way that every airport had its seasonal schedule visible in the departure hall, on the walls. Depending on the local arrangements, it would be on cardboard strips, or sometimes even hard plastic ones, for permanent destinations.
If a city had a permanent ticket booking office, separate from the airport, the schedules would be replicated on the walls there.
Some cities, at the beginning of the season, would dedicate a spread in the local newspaper to publish the airport schedule. It worked well for sub-million people cities, though I have no idea how a place like MOW would have managed -- so I wouldn't be surprised if the schedule for MOW region wasn't published in this fashion.

System-wide schedule was apparently created, but being a massive (hundreds of pages) volume of limited shelf-life, it was considered a waste to circulate it to the public, so it remained an internal document. Plus the secrecy -- why let foreign spies do their work an easy way?

For the person up-thread asking for rules for a foreigner traveling in USSR:
1) your visa specified places you could visit. There was some leeway -- if visa said "Moscow" it meant the city of Moscow proper, plus 30 km in all directions from the city limits.
2) ergo, if your visa didn't say "Kazan", you had no business being there, and did not need to know train and airplane schedules and fares to that place
3) if your visa said "Volgograd", yes, you'd be allowed to book passage there. Paid in hard currency (if "you" were from behind the Iron Curtain), and typically available, even if officially the flight/train was sold out. The operating word being "бронь", roughly translated as "reserve", "protected quota".
This "reserve" had multiple potential users, including government and party officials, dignitaries and "Introurist" foreign travel company (still exists in Russia today). Also, emergency cases were sometimes treated via this system.

Part of this "reserve", if unrequested, was released back into normal sales channels, gradually, mere hours before the departure, with certain leeway given to the staff down the line - for example, availability could have not been indicated in the general inventory, but only to the desk at the departure airport . Hence all the stories of someone bribing or smiling his/her way onto an otherwise oversold flight; or a telegram of a relative dying triggering some sort of bereavement protocol, where seats magically appeared out of thin air, or other stories of the same kind.

eta unknown wrote:

I think BGW was the old airport until SDA was built.

Did Baghdad even have another airport before the former SDA? AFAIK BGW is the IATA metro code for Baghdad, while SDA was the IATA code for the actual airport back when it was still called "Saddam International". I believe right after the US invasion of Baghdad, the airport was renamed into Baghdad International with BGW being the IATA airport code now. Even the ICAO code was changed from ORBS to ORBI, to visually distance the airport even further from Saddam Hussein.

I flew several times Kiev-Moscú-Kiev, living officially at Kiev at that time, pay my ticket in Roubles, 20/ one way
At that time it was not deemed very expensive.
To get reservation, no phone, no valid answers, but to go to Aeroflot office in the city and stay in the ticket’s line. My memories: 1 to 11/2 hours waiting
Slds

Apprentice wrote:

I flew several times Kiev-Moscú-Kiev, living officially at Kiev at that time, pay my ticket in Roubles, 20/ one way
At that time it was not deemed very expensive.
To get reservation, no phone, no valid answers, but to go to Aeroflot office in the city and stay in the ticket’s line. My memories: 1 to 11/2 hours waiting
Slds

Have you studied at KIIGA at the time?

I actually tend to remember, Kiev-Moscow Aeroflot ticket price was around 10 rubles, straddled by the price of second-class sleeper in an overnight train (~7 roubles, AFAIR) and first-class sleeper on the same train (first 11 roubles, later ~14). But that is vague by now; it was my father who plied that route a lot, me -- not so much, so my knowledge is somewhat second-hand. (He grew to prefer trains, as one could leave home 50 minutes before train departure, hop on the metro (every 2-4 minutes), in 35 minutes be at the station, walk to the train (1st platform only, so no visit to main station building, tunnel or concourse), hop aboard, change, have a train depart, and fall asleep. With airplanes, you had to catch a bus (once every thirty minutes, or an hour), be at the airport two hours before departure, and then be at the mercy of weather and other delays.)

As a foreigner, you apparently had to be able to pay in hard currency, to have access to that privileged reserve stock of tickets and seats. If you were from a fellow socialist country, and paid roubles -- you just marched to the same "Central cash offices of Aeroflot" in town, and queued up like the rest of us, correct?

Yes. 1978 - 1984. At that time, from a poor fellow country. We paid 20 doubles, the normal ones, same qty as everybody, only we use a different system to order tickets
Rgds