Moscow's busiest airport began life as a Soviet air force base
Sheremetyevo was meant for warplanes. A 1953 Soviet decree ordered a central air force airfield outside Moscow, and it opened in 1957 for the revolution's 40th anniversary. Within two years the military was out and a Tu-104B from Leningrad had landed, the first civilian arrival at what became Russia's busiest airport.
The name comes from a nearby village and railway station called Sheremetyevsky. After the Council of Ministers handed the base to the civil air fleet in August 1959, the airport grew quickly. Its first international service, an Ilyushin Il-18 to Berlin Schönefeld, left on 1 June 1960, and the next day a modest two-storey terminal was commissioned. By 1964, eighteen foreign airlines flew there and the airport handled 822,000 passengers, and by the end of 1965 most international flights into the USSR came through it, thanks to Aeroflot agreements with 47 countries.
The 1980 Moscow Olympics prompted a second terminal, Sheremetyevo-2, which began operating on 1 January 1980, months before its official ceremony, and served over 460,000 international passengers during the Games. Visitors did not always feel welcome. The Irish travel writer Dervla Murphy, passing through in 1983 because Aeroflot was the cheapest way to Madagascar, described the transit hotel as effectively a prison, its doors watched around the clock by armed guards.
After the Soviet collapse the airport stumbled. In the early 2000s two dozen airlines, including British Airways, Swiss and Emirates, defected to the newer and easier-to-reach Domodedovo. Aeroflot pushed for fresh terminals, and a burst of building followed: Terminal C in 2007, an Aeroexpress rail link cutting the trip to central Moscow to 30 minutes in 2008, and Terminals D and E soon after. By 2015 Sheremetyevo had overtaken its rival, with 31.28 million passengers against 30.05 million, and it served as the official airport of the 2018 World Cup.
In 2019 it handled about 49.9 million passengers, and a public contest added the poet Alexander Pushkin to its name, with the ceremony held on 5 June 2019, his 220th birthday. It sits 29 km northwest of the city centre and is Aeroflot's main hub.
Source: Sheremetyevo International Airport
