New challenges for Russian air transport

Russian commercial aviation faces serious challenges caused by the country’s deteriorating economic situation and political tensions over the crisis in Ukraine. As the double-digit growth demonstrated in the previous decade appears to be over, the top carriers are exploring ways to optimize costs and capacity.

Russian airlines have almost tripled the number of passengers carried annually since 2004, from 33.7 million to 84.6 million in 2013, but now the growth pace is slowing down. For the first three quarters of this year, the country’s airlines carried 72.9 million passengers, up 11.8% on the same period in 2013.

Aeroflot continued to lead with 17.8 million passengers carried, or up 13.4% year-on-year. Transaero ranked second with 10.4 million; UTair Aviation came third with 6.9 million people. These two carriers demonstrated the slowest growth of the top five Russian airlines, 6.4% and 9.3% respectively. S7 Airlines saw its passenger numbers grow by 14.6% in the first nine months of the year, reaching 6.1 million. The figures for Ural Airlines were 18.3% and 4 million. These five companies together accounted for 62.3% of all Russian passengers carried, the Federal Air Transport Agency reports.