Sheremetyevo International Airport

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Sheremetyevo International Airport (Russian: Шереме́тьево) Template:Airport codes, also known as Sheremetyevo-2, is an International airport which serves Moscow, Russia (located Template:Coor dms). It is a hub for the passenger operations of the Russian international airline Aeroflot. Moscow has several airports, of which the two most used are Sheremetyevo and Domodedovo International Airport (with Vnukovo a distant third). The IATA area code for Sheremetievo, Domodedovo and Vnukovo is MOW.

Sheremetyevo was opened on 11 August 1959; the first international flight was on 1 June 1960 to Berlin (Schönefeld Airport). Sheremetyevo-1 (used by domestic flights) was opened on 3 September 1964. On 12 September 1967, the first scheduled passenger flight of Tupolev Tu-134 departed from Sheremetyevo (to Stockholm), followed by the first scheduled flight of Ilyushin Il-62 (to Montreal) on 15 September.

Image:Svo terminal 2.jpgSheremetyevo-2 (the most likely entrance point for most tourists) was opened on 1 January 1980 for the Moscow Olympics.

Sheremetyevo-2 is the larger of the two terminals, and is the arrival and departure point for international flights. Flights to cities in Russia and charter flights arrive and depart Sheremetyevo-1. There is no physical connection between the two terminals; they are essentially separate airports using the same set of runways.

Today, the airport processes almost 12 million passengers annually (it recorded 12,174,000 passengers in 2005). This represents almost a quarter of all air passengers, and over 60% of the passengers on international airline flights. [Figures according to the official website].

1 Problems
2 Transport and accessibility
3 Ongoing construction
4 Airlines flying into Sheremetyevo
5 External links

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Problems

Sheremetyevo airport was called Europe's worst airport by The Russia Journal. The airport's infamous problems used to include long queues, delays at immigration, parking problems, dim lighting, poor seating, poor service and extremely inadequate transport links to the city. An ongoing renovation of SVO2 somehow alleviated some of these problems.

Connecting internationally to flights bound for Russian or CIS cities from Sheremetyevo can be a hassle. The only visa-free transfer between the international and domestic terminals is a shuttle bus run by Aeroflot. All other exits from the airport require a Russian visa, even if one holds a visa for another CIS country. Thankfully most of the CIS flights have been over the years moved to SVO2.

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Transport and accessibility

It can take anywhere from 20 minutes to two hours from the city center to get to the airport. The main road leading to the airport - Leningradskoe Shosse - can get clogged during the rush hour, often resulting in passengers missing their flights. Taxi fares tend to vary; the better your Russian, the lower the costs of getting to the airport. Slow buses and faster minivans (fixed price shared taxis) connect Sheremetyevo with Moscow's extensive metro network.

The airport lies in Moscow Oblast. The Moscow city, a separate federal entity with an infinitely stronger budget, has been trying to gain control of it for years. So far this hasn't happened and the city is unwilling to single-handedly finance a rapid transit system to link Moscow and the airport; Moscow Oblast is too poor to share the costs.

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Ongoing construction

In the 2000s Sheremetyevo saw growing competition from a newer and more comfortable (albeit smaller) Domodedovo International Airport. With major airlines leaving Sheremetyevo (most notably, British Airways and Swiss International Airlines), the need for reconstruction has become ever more evident.

Upgrading the airport will include construction of a new terminal, Sheremetyevo-3 - construction which was supposed to be paid for by the Russian national airline Aeroflot. Aeroflot currently accounts for over 50% of passengers arriving and departing Sheremetyevo and desperately needs its own terminal in order to gain admittance into SkyTeam alliance. Construction of the long-awaited third terminal finally started in 2005. It is slated for completion by the end of 2007; by that time more than 15 million passengers will be passing through Sheremetyevo's various terminals.

A rapid transit system (mentioned above) was supposed to connect the airport to Leningrad Station (Leningradskii vokzal) in Moscow, the departure point for trains to Saint Petersburg, formerly Leningrad. These plans seem to be put on hold as the City of Moscow announced it was going to concentrate efforts on upgrading a third Moscow airport, Vnukovo.

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