| [IMG=19289-4989] |
On May 24th, 2005 an agreement regarding negotiations start was signed according to which Aeroflot had a year to coordinate all necessary technical and organization details. In April 2005 the Heads of Aeroflot pointed out the opening of new horizons with joining the alliance.
In practice the Airline will have access to 684 airports in 133 countries of the world while at the moment Aeroflot realizes flights to 88 airports. With Air France and Delta being members of SkyTeam Aeroflot will dramatically extend the geography of flights to France, USA, countries of Latin America and Africa. Moreover, experts point out perspective changes for the passengers of Aeroflot flights, including better quality of onboard services and more convenient transit flights. Thus, according to SkyTeam standard, time between transit flights can not exceed 30 minutes.
This requirement is to be met after a new terminal Sheremetievo-3 is built. There passengers from flights by other members of the alliance will change to Aeroflot aircraft to go to the Russian regions and CIS countries.
Official agents of Aeroflot also hope for competitive recovery of Aeroflot. For example, Aram Antonyan, General Director of Bolero-tour, commented as follows: ‘at the moment Aeroflot is experiencing problems regarding shortage of aircraft and I hope entering SkyTeam will help to solve them’.
SkyTeam is the world’s third air alliance after Star alliance and One World. Such companies as Air France, Aero Mexico, Alitalia, Czech Airlines, Delta, Korean Air and KLM are members of SkyTeam. A propos, at the beginning of 2002 Star Alliance offered Aeroflot a membership, however national airline preferred SkyTeam to Star Alliance.
