Director of Operations Ken Gray believes the original intent of the ACSF audit was “worthy” because his company, Executive Fliteways of Ronkonkoma, N.Y., was undergoing a minimum of three safety audits a year. So when ACSF management approached him to become a charter member and help develop the new audit standard, Gray jumped at the chance.

Western operators shouldn’t “be afraid of Russia,” Koshelev counseled, as “infrastructure is improving, ATC is becoming more accustomed to working with business aviation and navigators aren’t required as much as before [more on that later]. English proficiency may not be up to the mark at the smaller outlying fields, but at the bigger airports it isn’t a problem.”

Also, if traffic is heavy at the destination airport and there are delays, don’t expect to be stacked into holding, Parke emphasized. “Russian controllers do not use holding patterns and vector everyone around if there are delays. This increases their workload considerably and contributes to the delays. During this maneuvering, it behooves you to keep your head up, as most of their aircraft are not equipped with TCAS for separation. They also maintain larger separation intervals than we do, which helps to string things out and adds to the delays.”