EXPRESS AIRLINE PASSENGER SERVICE OPENS BTW MOSCOW, ST PETE

St Petersburg, June 4 (Itar-Tass) - Russia's major airline Aeroflot has introduced a Moscow-St Petersburg-Moscow shuttle service that slashes sizably the time the passengers have to spend for check-in and other formalities at airports in both cities.

A ceremony dedicated to the launching of the new express service will be held Wednesday at the Pulkovo airport in St Petersburg.

Aeroflot executives and airport officials will tell the passengersabout the advantages offered by the shuttle route.

The customers will be able to spend less time at Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport and St Petersburg's Pulkovo airport owing to the introduction of new technological solutions, including the permanent parking places for boarding and alighting.

The shuttle service presupposes the absence of code-sharing flightschemes and one-time checks-in of passengers and their luggage.

One more specificity of the service is that passengers in the economy and business class will board and disembark by separate ramps and will be delivered to the jet and to the air terminal separately.

These measures will help to cut down the time between the completion of the check-in and the taxiing of the jet to the runway to 20 minutes, while the pickup of luggage will begin just 15 minutes after landing.

Aeroflot carries about 200,000 customers between Moscow and StPetersburg a month.

It makes nine own return flights a day, as well as ten code-sharing flight with the government-controlled Rossiya airline.