I can’t believe that it’s been a month already since I got back from vacation.

I barely just got all my pictures uploaded on to flickr.

I got an email about a picture I took of the Aeroflot offices on Piccadilly which got me thinking about airlines from my childhood.

Many of them are now defunct, anyone remembers British Caledonian?

In its heyday (back in the Soviet Union era) Aeroflot was the largest airline in the world, it’s also one of the oldest airlines.

By the eighties, it was flying to all five continents; Aeroflot was quite affordable back then but had a terrible reputation for having old Russian planes, being noisy and highly unreliable.

At school I was friends with two sisters who lived with their grandparents, occasionally they’d spend summers with their parents who lived somewhere in Europe.

They usually flew Aeroflot.

The sisters had this nightmarish encounter that really made me fearful of flying when I was a kid.

Basically, while on an Aeroflot flight the younger sister lost her passport, she just couldn’t find it.

They wouldn’t let her off the plane at her destination; the plane took her to Moscow where she spent a day alone being interrogated by “communists”.

Her passport was found the next day wedged somewhere between the old seats.

As an adult I’m not sure how factual this story is, but as a child the whole scenario scared the heck out of me.

Seeing the Aeroflot offices had me reading up on the airline, it has revamp its image – added a modern fleet, and improved customer service.

I think there’s a lesson in there to be learned for life.