Moscow — Sri Lanka: flight time. Plane tickets.

Friends! The big moment of our journey has finally come — we have bought our first Moscow — Sri Lanka plane tickets. This post is about the flight time from Moscow to Sri Lanka, whether to choose a direct flight or one with layovers, how to find the best tickets on the Moscow — Sri Lanka route, and about buying plane tickets online in general.

How long is the flight from Moscow to Sri Lanka. Direct flight time

The flight time from Moscow to Sri Lanka starts at 10.5 hours with 1 layover, with a minimum connection of 1 hour (see our screenshot above). Back then, direct flights were operated only by Transaero, and only on Saturdays. They cost 2 times as much as flights with 1 layover, so they made no sense. The flight time of the Transaero direct flight from Moscow to Sri Lanka was 8 hours.

 Moscow — Sri Lanka: finding cheap plane tickets

As many of you already know, the surest way to grab the cheapest plane tickets is to subscribe to routes/promotions from aggregators/airlines and keep an eye on the incoming offers. Also check prices every day on the most popular search engines — AviaSales.ru, OneTwoTrip.com, and SkyScanner.ru.

We got lucky: shortly before the planned start of our Journey, we caught a ticket sale from the wonderful Etihad. The sale was not run directly but through the online ticket booking service OneTwoTrip.com. In the end, we got one-way tickets for 12,094 rubles / person, which is cheaper than the options half a year earlier, when the exchange rate was ~35 rubles per USD (at the time of writing, the rate is ~62).

Let me say it again: Etihad was running a partner promotion with OneTwoTrip.com, and you won't find such prices through the airline itself. You may see these tickets at similar prices through various aggregators like AviaSales.ru, but the best price without extra markups is at OneTwoTrip.com.

 A pleasant surprise

I should mention that during our connection in Abu Dhabi, for a reason unknown to us, Etihad took the boarding passes from some passengers, including us, and handed out new ones with an upgrade to business class. Absolutely free. So we flew the second leg with our legs stretched out in extra-wide seats, sipping 12-year-old whiskey and 7-year-old wine and snacking on a cheese platter. Now that's what I call a loyalty program :)