Stabilization or Stagnation? Russian Aviation in 2001
The transport ministry of the Russian Federation released preliminary results of
Russian civil aviation activities in the past year, claiming 21.7 million
passengers carried, 1% more than in 1999. The traffic was 53.4 billion
km*passengers, the same as for the previous year, while there was a slight
increase in km*tones, by 3.3%. This increase largely came from cargo sector,
which saw a rise of 9.5% in 2000. Remarkably, cargo traffic rose both inside and
outside the country, by 18.5 and 4.2% respectively. Although the passenger
figures for 2000 and 1999 remained almost the same, there was an important
change in the structure of the passenger traffic, with the share of
international flights rising by 15%, up to 50%.
Financial results of the past year have not been estimated yet, but these are
expected to be slightly higher than a year ago due to a better use of the fleet,
marked by the increase in seat-loading factor from 62.4% to 64% and commercial
load factor from 55.9 to 57%.
The fleet and infrastructure of the Russian civil aviation saw no big changes in
2000. Only a handful of new runways for large aircraft were put in use,
including only three /in Chelyabinsk, Kazan and Kemerovo/ able to provide
operations of such large aircraft as the Tu-154 airliner and the Il-76
freighter. Three more runways were strengthened and extended, including one in
Ostafievo near Moscow, a former air force base converted to a corporate airport
for air arm of the RAO Gazprom natural gas corporation. The largest project
finalized last year was that on major reconstruction of the passenger terminal
in Moscow Domodedovo airport. Private-sector East Line group, which controls
this airport, has invested $290-300 million into improvement of Domodedovo
infrastructure i…
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