NZFF

Christmas... but not for everyone in Europe. I think about friends and relatives in the Ukraine... and the people, they must left behind her home.


Kiew Borispil is the biggest airport in the Ukraine. But he has seen better days.



Flying to the South to Odessa is a good idea, not only in summer.






A blowing wind makes it today not easy to go...







The cloud cover is behind us... climbing to 27.000 ft. The trip is short.



The Boeing 737-500 in the Ukraine is earmarked to leave the fleet in 2018... no information what´s next.



Boeing-Style...



Not much time here over the clouds, time to land at runway 16 in Odessa...







Clouds and fog ... I make all things clear for autoland.













With "Coming out of the dark" by Gloria Estefan out of the boxes behind me the aircraft find it´s way without assistance ... automaticly...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QS7qLDizDYo





Some lights (in this Freeware addon) seemed to be missing on the ground...



Yes... we are down...



Going to the Gates...



The airport of Odessa is here seen in the old soviet Fashion. Meanwhile a new Terminal is build. It is (also in the scenery more on the right side of the view.



But... the war in the east has reduced the importance of the airport ... Foreign tourists from the EU are rare ... most are Ukrainians from abroad and foreign (military) personal.



... or other personal from the United States.

Another great flight ... with information
I have always been fascinated by Odessa ... the scene of so many spy stories.

For me Odessa was a true international place in the Ukraine. 85% of the people spoke not the ukraine language in the normal course of life... before 2015 and the Poroshenko-Regime. I have seen the remove from any russian signs at the airport of Odessa.

First, they remove the signs, then the culture and religion and at last the people itself.... Since the remove of Yanukovych from power and his corrupt but with democratic legitimation elected government and the regime of Arseniy Yatsenyuk after 22. Februar 2014. 1.7 Millions of people left the Ukraine... 200.000 to the West (a lot of them "marriages") and 1.5 Millions to Russia. In Donbass after oficial UN-documents more than 10.000 people, most of them civilians died. In the terror immediately after the "Regime change" thousands of people are missing. But about these people you never hear in the media... This is the Ukraine today. Not a country for vacations but one of the biggest countries of europe outside the EU. Bankrupt... economical and political to.

And the Krim... this is a special case. In curse of the "Regime Change" in February 2014 the plan by NATO was to capture Sewastopol and drive the russian navy out. But this failed...