To celebrate more than 46 years of its scheduled air-services between Vienna and Moscow and the established close relations between the two cities Austrian Airlines organized on September 17, 2005, at Sheremetievo 2 International Airport a ceremony to officially name an Airbus A319 jet ‘Moscow’.
The Mayor of the City of Moscow, Yuri Mikhailovich Luzhkov acted as godfather and unveiled during the ceremony the name “Moscow” on the nose of the modern medium-range jet, which will bear the registration OE-LDD.
In presence of a representative of the Moscow Patriarchate of the Russian Orthodox Church the Roman Catholic General Curate Monsignor Andrzej Stezkevich blessed the aircraft.
Austrian Airlines is the first foreign airline to name one of its aircrafts after the city of Moscow. The ceremony was attended by the Austrian Ambassador, the Ambassador of the Sovereign Order of Malta and high-ranking representatives of the Russian Civil Aviation Authority, Aeroflot and the airport Sheremetievo.
‘By naming this aircraft ‘Moscow’, the Austrian Airlines Group wishes to express its many years of close relations with Russia and its capital city’, declared Chief Commerecial Officer Dr. Josef E. Burger at the ceremony, before going on to say: “Austrian Airlines is flying to Moscow since June 5, 1959, for more than 46 years, and has continuously expanded this traditional link between the two cities and the two countries’
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