GROZNY, October 5 (RIA Novosti) - The first passenger airliner in a decade landed in Grozny, the capital of the Chechen Republic in the North Caucasus, on Thursday.
A Tu-134 airliner delivered federal and local government officials from Moscow to Grozny to mark the completion of reconstruction works at the city's airport, after it was devastated in two wars in the 1990s.
"We have opened one of the most important facilities, the significance of which is hard to overestimate," the Chechen President Alu Alkhanov said at the opening ceremony.
Alik Zulgayev, the first deputy head of Chechen airline Vainakhavia, said airliners would initially fly between Grozny and Moscow once a day, and that international flights would begin from 2007. He said the airport would handle up to 15 flights a day in the future, as it did before the wars.
