Russia’s flagship airline Aeroflot resumed regular flights between Moscow and Tbilisi from October 27 after six-year pause.

Aeroflot will conduct flights with Airbus A320 from Sheremetyevo Airport on daily basis.

Russia cut regular direct air flights with Georgia in October, 2006, following spy row between the two countries. The flights were restored in late March, 2008, but were again suspended after the August war. In 2010 the Georgian Airways and Russia’s Sibir Airlines launched flights, which were formally dubbed as “charter” flights, but were actually conducted on a regular basis.

Russia’s federal aviation agency, Rosaviatsia, announced in September about resumption of “regular” flights between the two countries and said that it had issued permits for conducting regular flights to seven Russian airlines – Aeroflot; VIM Airlines; Globus; Sibir Airlines; Transaero; Ural Airlines and UTair.

Resumption of regular direct flights was one of the issues discussed between Georgia and Russia in frames of direct dialogue launched in December, 2012 and led by Georgian PM’s special envoy for relations with Russia Zurab Abashidze and Russia’s deputy foreign minister Grigory Karasin.