American Airlines offers direct flights to Moscow

American Airlines is finally adding Moscow to its list of destinations.

Photo: American Airlines offers direct flights to Moscow

American Airlines said Tuesday it will offer direct flights from O'Hare International Airport to the Russian capital beginning next summer, making it just the second U.S. carrier to fly into Moscow and the first to fly there nonstop from Chicago.

Flights from Chicago will begin June 2 and operate daily except Sundays, using 225-seat Boeing 767-300 aircraft. Departures from Moscow's Domodedovo International Airport also will be six days a week - every day but Monday.

Delta Air Lines Inc. is the only U.S. airline that currently flies into Moscow, with direct flights from both New York and Atlanta. The Russian flagship airline Aeroflot also operates nonstop flights between Moscow and both New York and Los Angeles.

American, a unit of Fort Worth, Texas-based AMR Corp., said Moscow is its fifth major international destination added out of O'Hare since November 2005, following announcements involving flights to Delhi, India and Shanghai, China, which since have begun, and flights to Buenos Aires, Argentina, starting Dec. 13, and to Beijing in March 2009.