Published: 3/27/1998

The Federal Aviation Service of the Russian Federation (FAS RF) has released preliminary figures on Russian civil aviation activities in the past year. The main trends continue: decline on domestic routes and improvement in the international and cargo transport sectors. Rough calculations show that the passenger traffic was 61.5 billion km-passengers in comparison with 64.5 for the previous year. The number of passengers carried dropped from 26.9 million to 25.1. Commenting on these figures, Ivan Valov, first deputy director, FAS RF, said that the major part of the fall came in the first half of the year, whereas the period from October to December was better than in 1996. International flights saw a rise of 25.7% compared to the 1996 level. Development of cargo traffic was based chiefly on flights abroad. On the domestic routes the rise was 10.8%, whereas the overall improvement was 25.7%. Partly this is explained by much lower tariffs offered by the railways, whose network is very wide in the former USSR. Russian civil aviation is showing signs of becoming more economically efficient, but still remains unprofitable. In the past year the losses totaled Rbs0.45trillion, in comparison with Rbs1.2 trillion in 1996. Stricter licensing policy resulted in 63 operators (out of 330 registered) having to halt flights and 40 others to cancel them. At the same time, only 36 new operator licenses were awarded to applicants. (VK) (AL398.1)

Article ID: 119