Now comes the real confusion. We start up and are taxiing to the runway at Khabarovsk. Halfway to the runway, the ground controller says, “Stop taxi.” You don't hear that in the U.S.—or other countries for that matter—the proper terminology is, “Hold in position.” Given his accent and the non-standard phrase, we didn't at first understand what he wanted, but we eventually figured it out and stopped. We stayed in that position for over two hours.

The language problem, from our standpoint, is that the Russian controllers' command of English is pretty much limited to that having to do with normal operations. They are unable to convey or understand a wider usage of English. It's complicated by the fact that this all takes place over the radio. You're not looking at the guy, not able to use facial expressions, body language, etc.

They did, finally, get somebody on the radio who had better English, and things were slowly explained to us. We, of course, had the usual concern about burning our fuel while sitting there. Eventually we shut down two engines, then finally all four. It was to everyone's credit that, at no point, did anyone get mad; though all concerned were frustrated with the actual problem and the language problem.

What had happened—and we didn't get full details until we reached Japanese airspace—was that a Russian had typed TOF007 rather than TOW007 in a telegram. This resulted in our being denied entry into Taiwan's airspace. The flight, starting in Russian airspace, was to proceed into Japanese airspace, then Tainwanese, then Chinese. Each country checks with the adjacent country. If all don't agree, the flight cannot leave the ground. Each country varies in how close it checks flights against whether that company has permission to operate in their airspace. In this case, the Taiwanese said they had not given overflight permission to any company having a call sign starting with TOF. Japan then told the Russians that they would not grant entry to the flight. In the end, the Russians resent everything with the correct TOW designation and all was well.

When we finally started up again, the wind had changed, requiring a change of runway. The confusion continued. We were cleared to to “taxi runway 5 left and backtrack 5 right.” This made no sense, but it seemed obvious that what they wanted was a backtrack on 5 right and then a taxi to 5 left. It was a correct guess.

Then came the confusion that was the most frustrating for me. I was running the radios and had to pick up and read back our departure clearance. When it came across, it was very confusing. After three tries, I knew what I thought they meant. The captain, however, was convinced that they couldn't possibly mean that. It called for us to take off to the north and then turn left back to the airport so as to cross over the airport eastbound at 18,700 feet (actually 5700 meters). He stopped the airplane, and instructed me to start over again with them. Now this guy is generally pretty easy to fly with, but if he thinks his authority is being challenged, he can be very difficult. So, I started the whole thing again...and it came out the same way...and the captain said that cannot be.

At that point, I decided the best way to break the impasse was to break the routing down into very small questions, finally ending in asking them if they wanted us at 5,700 meters before we crossed back over the airport. It took awhile. Each time I'd ask a question, there would be a pause at their end—time to translate—and finally a “yes” would come back. With that, the captain decided that they probably meant what they had originally said, and we took off.

The Russians seem not to coordinate between their facilities. In my previous times operating into and out of Khabarovsk, we had never flown the route given to us in the elaborate, personal briefing in operations—the walk in there has always been a waste of time. When you're given your clearance while taxiing, it's different, and when you get in the air, what you actually fly is different yet. That was true this time as well, but the confusion there would take too many words to explain—except for the altitudes. The captain kept asking me to request a higher altitude so as to not have to level out at each altitude they had given us. I kept trying to explain that they would not grant us a higher altitude until they observed us—on radar—level at the last altitude they had assigned. But he insisted, so I would request a higher altitude, and they would come back with the same altitude they had last assigned. Other countries anticipate your climb and generally arrange it so you can climb without levelling whenever possible.