Confident growth for Russian business aviation

The Russian bizav market will remember 2011 as the first year of post-crisis stability. The market players concur that the market started growing again last year, albeit at slower than pre-crisis rates. According to Leonid Shcherbakov, chief inspector of the Aerotrans dispatch service center, there were more than 150,000 business aircraft movements in Russia in 2011. In fact, bizav growth resumed back in 2010, topping the annual results for 2006 and 2009, but 2011 became the most favourable year in terms of business aircraft movements since 2006.

The Aerotrans estimate is seconded by Evgeny Bakhtin, president of AVCOM-Domodedovo Business Aviation Center. Bakhtin explains the modest but confident growth of Russian business aviation by the moderate economic growth in the country, rising global energy prices, an increase in the welfare of Russian citizens and the growing paying demand for business aviation services: "Although the increase in business aviation movements through Russian airports has been considerably lower than the impressive 40-45% a year registered in the mid-noughties, the Russian market last year managed to reach the pre-crisis 2008 levels, and even exceeded those by 12% by the end of 2011."

Aerotrans says the ratio of Russian and foreign business aviation carriers operating in Russia stood at 51% to 49% in 2011, indicating no significant change from the previous years. But this year the situation changed again. In the first three months of 2012 foreign operators accounted for 60% of all bizav movements in Russia.
Anna Nazarova