First Standing Room Only Flight

While the story above is pretty ridiculous, please do not use that (or a Romanian flight from 25 years ago) to generalize an entire country's airline industry. I have flown Aeroflot many times (10+ hour flight Seattle-Moscow), and the plane, food, and service were vastly superior to most American airlines I've flown.

There are times when we really needed to get some place that I'd have done it, at least for a short flight. I think I'd avoid a Russian airline for a lot more reasons than just this though, one of my worst flights ever was back in 1985 on the Romanian Airline. There are more than enough oxygen masks, on most airlines they have at least one more than the number of seats in each row section, would not be surprised if a Russian airline had just one for each seat. If not flying over water I wouldn't be concerned about life vests. Having flown ourselves multiple times and multiple places the seatbelt thing wouldn't bother me much either but I'd be sure to sit in an aisle near a bulkhead to brace against on takeoff and landing. I sure don't blame them for demanding money back though!