One of the Aeroflot spinoffs used to fly once a week from Seattle to Magadan and Khabarovsk via Anchorage with a TU-154. This was in the mid-’90s. For a time the flight was also operated with a Ilyushin Il-62. I wouldn’t be too surprised if Anchorage receives TU-154s or IL-62s on a fairly regular basis. I remember an IL-62 was involved in a ground taxi incident with an Asiana 747 in Anchorage not too long ago. To my knowledge there is no prohibition on Russian aircraft types flying into the US.

Air Moldova Flight #702 from Crooked Creek, Alaska (CKD) to Moscow (DME Domodedovo)

This is impossible, there must be an error in filing. Crooked Creek has a population of 137, it doesn’t have anything around and >90% of the population are native americans. Besides, that would be the first Tu-154 flight allowed to US. I bet it should be CKC instead of CKD. CKC is Cherkassy, quite big ukrainian city close to Moldova (you said Air Moldova operates the flight).

In general, air market between US and Russia is definitely under-served and you have to make connections in either Europe (Frankfurt, if you fly popular Lufthansa) or Asia (Seoul is the biggest trans-Pacific air hub). Currently besides publicly available flights there are also charters from US to the russian island of Sakhalin in west Pacific, where Shell and other companies drill oil wells and many americans and europeans live. There are rumors that new model of Tupolev “Tu-204″ jets will be admitted into US air space and Vladivostok Air will work commercially between VVO and Seattle in late 2008 but as for now — demand is high but market is, as I said, well underserved.

Regards.

Hello All,

Interesting comments, I’ll pull up my worldwide flight schedule database from OAG in a few hours and check out JFK-SVO (mentioned flight DL #30) route (I recall i did this post in the wee hours of the morning and that database tool has such — small type — how is that for an excuse. I fixed the typos, and bolded the ATL-SVO route which was mentioned (probably meant the JFK-SVO route that appears to be missing).

Thanks for keeping me honest, it is appreciated,

Cheers,

Rick

DL# 30 also flies from JFK to SVO.

And it’s Sheremetyevo and Domodedovo

The two airports are named after adjacent towns.

The town of Sheremetyevo is named after counts Sheremetyev, who (AFAIK) had their estate (and owned serfs) in the village. I believe this guy is one of them.