Aerolineas Argentinas confirmed that tomorrow, March 18, at 01:05 am the seventh flight operated by the company will depart bound for Moscow to bring a new shipment of Sputnik V vaccines.
Flight AR1060 will cover the route directly and will stay in Moscow for about 4 hours to load the vaccines. The return to the Ezeiza international airport under flight number AR1061 will be next Friday, March 19, at 3:00 p.m local time.
In total, there will be 40 hours of operation between the 16 hours of flight to the Sheremetievo airport, the loading process, and the almost 18 hours that the Moscow-Buenos Aires leg will imply.
The operation is carried out in Aerolíneas Argentinas’ Airbus A330-200, for which the company has destined two aircraft that can be used to scale the requirements: The one with registration LV-GHQ can accommodate the load in its cargo area and the A330 with registration LV-GIF can also use the passenger cabin for larger quantities, as seats were removed for extra space.
Aerolineas Argentinas began its flights to Moscow at the end of December. In the first two flights, 600,000 doses of Sputnik V arrived in the country while 220,000 additional doses arrived in the third operation.
On the 4th flight, 400,000 Sputnik V’s new doses were delivered to Ezeiza airport, where the domestic logistics effort starts for the distribution of the vaccines to all provinces. 904,000 doses of Sinopharm COVID-19 vaccines were brought from the People’s Republic of China in another special operation with the Airbus A330-200 and later a fifth flight to Russia was completed where 517,000 extra doses were transferred.
Finally, the sixth flight brought 732,000 doses into the country from Moscow. The flag carrier has so far transferred 3,374,000 doses of vaccines to Argentina. In addition, 20.000 doses of Sputnik V were carried for Bolivia, which completed the delivery in a BOA flight from Ezeiza to La Paz.