Wizz Air becomes 11th airline to fly between Moscow and the UAE; is this a city-country record?
Wizz Air Abu Dhabi became the latest carrier to offer non-stop service between an airport in the UAE and Moscow, when it launched 4-weekly service between Abu Dhabi and Moscow VKO on Wednesday 15 December. This is Wizz Air’s fourth route to Moscow. It began serving the Russian capital from Budapest as long ago as September 2013 and has since added flights from Debrecen in Hungary (December 2017) and London LTN (October 2019).
According to Cirium data for January 2022, the airlines connecting Moscow with airports in the UAE are:
- Aeroflot: Moscow SVO to Abu Dhabi (3-weekly), Dubai (21-weekly) and Sharjah (weekly)
- Air Arabia: Moscow DME to Sharjah (7-weekly)
- Azur Air: Moscow VKO to Abu Dhabi (weekly) and Dubai (2-weekly)
- Emirates: Moscow DME to Dubai (14-weekly)
- Etihad Airways: Moscow SVO to Abu Dhabi (7-weekly)
- flydubai: Moscow VKO to Dubai (14-weekly)
- Nordwind Airlines: Moscow SVO to Sharjah (2-weekly)
- Pobeda: Moscow VKO to Dubai (14-weekly)
- S7 Airlines: Moscow DME to Dubai (weekly)
- Ural Airlines: Moscow DME to Dubai (weekly) and Ras Al Khaimah (weekly); Moscow ZIA to Dubai (2-weekly)
- Wizz Air Abu Dhabi: Moscow VKO to Abu Dhabi (4-weekly)
That makes a total of 95 weekly flights. These are the planned frequencies for the week commencing 24 January 2022. Given that for the week commencing 6 December 2021 there were only 69 weekly flights, this might not be the final figure.
A choice of 11 carriers between one city (Moscow) and one country (UAE) is a very high figure. For comparison this winter, London-US has just six carriers, New York-Mexico has eight, while London-Spain has nine. If anyone can think of a more competitive city-country market, drop me a line at ralph@anker-report.com
