Small Northern Russian operator seeks future with slighly bigger carrier

Published: 9/20/1999

The Vice Governor of Yamalo-Nenetsky Autonomous Region in Northern Russia, Mikhail Ponomarev, has held negotiations over the creation of a holding company that would merge Yamal Airlines and Kogalymavia, based at Kogalim Airport in the Tyumen Region. Yury Neyelov, Governor of the Region, described the negotiations as “tentative”. He added that: “There is no doubt that it is extremely difficult for our airline to survive alone and a merger will secure its future”. He acknowledged that it was difficult for the airline to compete with large operators and claimed that a joint holding company could generate “reasonable” shared revenues. The combined force could enable Yamal to start flying internationally, although Neyelov admitted that this would still be difficult to achieve. He stressed that Yamal had not gone bankrupt and that it simply wanted to “utilize a common economic interest." Kogalmavia operates a fleet of 10 aircraft including five Tu-154Ms and 10 helicopters including 4 Mil Mi—8/17s and has recently added four Tu-134s to its fleet. It considers that in spite of escalating aviation fuel costs in Russia's airports, the Tu-134s have lower maintenance costs than others, so allowing them to stabilize ticket prices, at least for the time being. The Czech Ministry of Defence and a Hungarian airline previously owned the Tu-134s. Three jets are currently being prepared for the service and one is already being used on the route Kogalym-Moscow.

Article ID: 879