Page 102 - RusRPTJun19

attributed to about 30% rise in the cost of jet fuel. At the end of 2018 Aeroflot said it plans to outgrow the market and transport 90mn-100mn passengers in 2023, almost double the 50mn passengers carried in 2017. The goal could be reached by deepening regional penetration through four new regional aviation hubs in addition to the one in Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport and relying on now notorious SSJ-100 medium-range jets for domestic destinations. The closest competitor of Aeroflot, S7 Group, in response said it plans to become the first carrier in Russia to completely revamp its mid-range fleet with Airbus 320/321 neo and Boeing 737 MAX new generation jets.
Russia's Prosecutor General Yury Chaika slammed the regulation of the aviation industry in his address to the State Duma, following up on the tragic crash of Sukhoi Superjet 100 in the Sheremetyevo airport. According to Chaika, the state-run aviation safety programs have not been renewed since 2008, are not in line with international requirements, and have no state official appointed to enforce them. The Ministry of Transportation is lagging behind on introducing all the necessary legislation for certification of aviation equipment and personnel training, as well as confirming the rules of technical maintenance of airplanes, he added. Vedomosti daily reminds on May 29 that in 2018 the CIS countries had largest ratio of serious flight incidents per million flights in the world. Chaika also said that since 2017 the Prosecutor's Office has dismissed 550 pilots, cancelled 160 operation licences, and shut down two aviation schools after discovering incomplete curriculum.
Passenger rights company AirHelp has ranked Sheremetyevo as the 6th best airport in the world for 2019. AirHelp’s rankings are based on three factors: on-time performance, service quality, and food and shopping options. Topping AirHelp’s rankings are Doha’s Hamad International Airport, Tokyo Haneda International Airport, and Athens International Airport, which have taken the top spots since the ratings began in 2015. Just ahead of Sheremetyevo are Curitiba’s Afonso Pena International Airport and Gdansk’s Lech Walesa Airport. Moscow’s main airport is then followed by Singapore’s Changi Airport Singapore, Hyderabad’s Rajiv Gandhi International Airport, Tenerife North Airport, and Viracopos/Campinas International Airport. Sheremetyevo is one of Europe’s busiest airports, with traffic of 46mn people last year. The airport is implementing a large-scale, long-term development programme up to 2026, in, which infrastructure investment of $2.5bn (€2.1bn) will ultimately increase annual passenger capacity to 80mn.
Russia’s federal air transport agency (Rosaviatsiya) said in a preliminary report for April that the number of passengers carried by Russian airlines was up 12.1% year-on-year and stood at 8.97 mn, Rosaviainsider.com reports. Russia’s top five airlines experienced good growth in the month, according to the agency’s data. Flag carrier Aeroflot remains the undisputed leader, with 3.1mn passengers (+8.3%). S7 Airlines, Russia’s largest private airline, remains in second, having transported onemn passengers in April, an impressive 21.1% increase on a year earlier. Rossiya Airlines, a member of Aeroflot Group, moved up to third place after returning to double-digit growth (+10.7%), having transported some 801,000 people during April, the carrier’s best growth rate in many months. Russia’s only low-cost carrier (LLC) Pobeda is the leader in terms of passenger growth among the top five (+45.3%), with its flights used by 760,000 passengers, placing the Aeroflot subsidiary in fourth position. Ural Airlines remains in fifth place. Last month, 697,000 passengers used the airline’s services, which is a 9.3 per year-on-year increase.
102 RUSSIA Country Report June 2019 www.intellinews.com