Aeroflot to Join SkyTeam

Although the news that Aeroflot is going to join the airline alliance SkyTeam is nothing new, there's now an official date to its entry: April 14.

Air France-KLM CEO Jean-Cyril Spinetta will fly to Moscow to welcome Aeroflot to SkyTeam, Aeroflot deputy CEO Lev Koshlyakov said Tuesday in a telephone interview from Moscow, reported Bloomberg.

Aeroflot will gain access to SkyTeam's 684 destinations in 133 countries. It flies to 88 destinations, 27 of them in Russia. It is also the first Russian airline to join a global airline alliance.

There have been murmurs about how Aeroflot's standards aren't up to par with the likes of Air France, KLM, Delta, etc., or how all of those old Tupolevs that they fly are too old. Now I've never flown Aeroflot or Air France or KLM, so I can't attest to that statement. I'm sure it can't be much worse than Delta or Northwest. And about the Tupolevs: they're built like tanks. If you're afraid of flying on an Aeroflot Tupolev, shouldn't you be equally afraid of flying on a Northwest DC-9?