The logo of Russian airline Aeroflot is seen on an Airbus A320-200 in Colomiers, near Toulouse, France, September 26, 2017. Photo by Reuters
Russian airline Aeroflot has announced that it will resume direct flights between Moscow and Ho Chi Minh City on January 31 next year.
It would be a twice-weekly service with flights on Wednesdays and Sundays aboard 368-seat Boeing 777 aircraft, it said on its website.
It takes approximately nine hours and 15 minutes to fly between the two cities.
In early December, Vietnam’s Civil Aviation Authority allowed Aeroflot to resume direct services, which also included flights to Hanoi, suspended in March last year due to the war between Russia and Ukraine .
Vietnam Airlines, the only Vietnamese airline serving Russia, also stopped its service to Moscow at the same time.
For almost two years, passengers traveling between Vietnam and Russia have had to use Emirates Airlines, Qatar Airways and Turkish Airlines flights with stopovers in the Middle East.
Obviously, the prices were higher.
Before the outbreak of Covid-19 in late 2019, Russia was one of Vietnam’s ten largest sources of tourists.
Without direct flights, arrivals from Russia have fallen to 97,000 this year, a fifth of the pre-Covid number, with people arriving mainly by charter flights.
