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aviation agency. SSJ-100, produced by Sukhoi Civil Aircraft, had been struggling to compete with Boeing and Airbus equivalents. In 2014, the company delivered just 37 civilian airliners, compared to 124 military aircraft, but has been supported by the state since 2015. In March 2018, Russia's President Vladimir Putin has thrown his weight behind a RUB85bn ($1.5bn) investment into a new version of SSJ100. Reportedly, the flight times of SSJ100 increased by 9% in 2017 from 100 to 109 hours monthly or from 3.3 to 3.6 hours daily. In the meantime, the medium-distance foreign jets such as Airbus 320 and Boeing 737-800 were used for 10 and 11 hours daily, on average, respectively. Embraer E-170 also beats SSJ100 with an average of 6 hours daily. Currently 106 SSJ100s are used in Russia and 33 abroad. Russian national carrier Aeroflot is the largest user of SSJs and in September 2018 took on the 49th jet of this category into the fleet. The share of Russian jets in the fleet is growing and now amounts to 14%.
Nataliya Filyova, co-owner and chairwoman of the board of directors of Russia’s S7 Airlines, died in a plane crash in Germany on March 31, a spokesperson for the company told PRIME. “On March 31, 2019, S7 Airlines shareholder Natalia Valeryevna Filyova died at the age of 55 years when her private Epic-LT plane was preparing to land at Egelsbach Airport (Frankfurt-on- Main). Circumstances of this tragedy are not known yet,” the company said.
Russian national air carrier Aeroflot has been recognised as the Favourite International Airline in China for the third consecutive year at the ceremony in Shanghai, the company said in a press-release on April 23. The award is granted by the jury and by votes from frequent flyers and travellers. The key competitive advantages of Aeroflot that gained it the award are the high service quality and flexible fare policy.
Russian airline UTAir seeks to postpone its bond repayment by 35 years, in addition to previous attempts to relapse RUB31.4bn ($488mn) worth of banking loans, Vedomosti daily reported on April 10 citing the announcement of Finans-Avia financial subsidiary of the carrier. Reportedly, UTAir now proposes to bondholders to pay out 20% of issues worth RUB4.1bn and 6% of the issue of RUB9.2bn, while pushing the rest of RUB11.8bn payments by 35 years on two issues normally maturing in 2022 and 2027. As reported by bne IntelliNews, Russian state-owned banks VTB and Sberbank could use the heavily indebted UTAir as the basis for creating a new regional airline. The two banks were tasked by the government to set up another domestic airline in October 2018, to improve transport links within the country that stretches across eight time zones. Analysts surveyed by Vedomosti see the proposal to the bondholders as unattractive, noting that 35-year delay would turn the issues into de-facto perpetual bonds with their value approaching zero The total debt of UTAir amounts to RUB75.8bn, out of which RUB39.1bn account for two syndicated loans issues by 11 banks, on which UTAir already technically defaulted. Previously in March UTAir requested to write off RUB31.4bn of banking debt. Out of the syndications a third is directly owed to Sberbank, with the other two largest participants in the syndicate are Trust bank (35%) and Rossiya (20%). The state has also made a direct loan to the company of another RUB17.4bn, which is under the management of Sberbank, bringing the share of the debt under Sberbank’s control to just over half of the outstanding debt. UTAir is Russia's fourth largest airline with 1.1mn passenger turnover in January-February, following Aeroflot, S7 Group, and Urals airlines.
Private shareholders of Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport could sell up to 30% of the airport’s shares, the co-owner and chairman of Sheremetyevo’s
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