Dawn broke on our last day in Russia and we had a morning tour booked for Domodedovo before our afternoon flight back to London, which we hoped wouldn't be the disaster that we had two days previously.

Another wonderful "breakfast" at the Aerotel was had before checking out. This is the closest hotel to he airport and it's more than comfortable - nice clean rooms a couple of bars but the food really does leave something to be desired. You can find better eats in the wilds of Siberia believe me, if only they could fix this place. Anyway we walked back to the airport for the usual security formalities and identification badge issue, before walking via flight operations to our bus waiting airside. The conversation was a little tense understandably and we just waited to see where we would be taken.

First stop was the maintenance ramp which is where things used to kick off - so far so good. This is the area where we usually find the most interesting aircraft. We were driven to the far end and let off the bus where an immaculate Rossiya Il-18 was parked. Now sometimes these aircraft are off limits to photographers as this one is part of the government fleet, but who are we to pass up an opportunity like this in such fantastic light? I've found that the light in Russia can very often be very tricky but today the light was fantastic.

Along the line were a couple of Il-76s - one from the FSB, MChS Rossil and a new example for me an airframe from Alrosa in their usual immaculately clean colours. A lovely Atlant-Soyuz Tu-154 for VIP flights was also parked here with an MChS Rossil Il-62, a Tu-154 belonging to Zapolarye (now flying in Iran) and a Mi-8 in UTAir colours but devoid of titles. The single western aircraft on this line was a Boeing 737-300 in Air Union colours.

The taxiways with Tu-154s were mostly empty now and many of the Il-62s parked on the grass were missing presumed scrapped. We stopped next to the southerly runway runway and were told we could have a few hours here. We couldn't really be bothered with asking to around the ramps after the last visit and as they were using this runway to land an the sun was on our back, we decided to simply hang out here. There were lots of large steps scattered around so we used these to get a better perspective for the photos.

It was well over an hour before we saw a single Russian built aircraft movement and in the couple of hours we spent there there was only two Tu-134s. A pretty sad state of affairs it has to be said, and this combined with the new staff who seem to be very uninterested in helping us means it will most probably be my last visit to this airport. There really isn't much here to really interest me anymore with at least 85% of the aircraft now being cheap western aircraft due to our failed economy. What a shame.

Well that's the final part of Arctic trip. It had its highs and lows but I wouldn't trade it for the world. Russia is such an interesting place to visit aviation wise if you can get there.

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