Aeroflot shrinks its winter schedule by 11% from 1998/99

Published: 10/26/1999

Having tried the radical move of not reducing its flights significantly during its winter schedule in 1998/99 it seems that Aeroflot will reduce the number of flights in the schedule for 1999 by 11%, according to a press conference by the company. This reflects what has been a poor nine months for air travel internationally according to figures from the FSVT, with volumes down by 6% overall, but international volumes down by 15%, although the Aeroflot figures remained flat on the same period. Aeroflot's winter schedule concentrates on popular winter resorts (South East Asia, Egypt, United Arab Emirates). The company also hopes to attract not only Russian but foreign tourists from Europe to its Asian flights through the combination of cost and convenience. Using its flights from European cities to transit passengers onto Aeroflot's A-310 and B-777 flights to Bangkok and Hong Kong through Moscow. Flights to S.E. Asia are expected to be particularly popular over the Christmas period and the airline will increase the Moscow -Bangkok price to $880 from $540 after the 15th of December. The airline did however, have some fairly harsh things to say about the transiting through Moscow's Sheremetyevo Airport for Russian passengers, where they are required to recover their baggage if they have arrived at Sheremetyevo 1 from within Russia and re check in and go through customs and other formalities again at Sheremetyevo 2. Passengers from Kyrgyz, Kazakstan and Belorus, join the hapless Russian traveller in this process, but not those of Armenia, Moldova and the Ukraine. Aeroflot highlight this particular piece of bureaucratic foolishness as being yet another reason to move them selves to a terminal handling all of Aeroflot's flights in Moscow. The airlines' current load factors of 65-70% to Western Europe and Eastern Europe are profitable. The same cannot be said of their state encouraged long haul routes to the Russian Far East where one of their flights according to the company loses between $3000-6000 per flight despite high load factors. Elsewhere Aeroflot is unhappy about its flights to US given the difficulty Russians are having getting US visas. Leading to tickets being returned due to failure to get a visa and flights are flying with low factors. The airline does plan to combat the problem this winter by replacing the B-777 with the smaller B-767 on the US routes. The B-777 flights to Bangkok and Bejing have however, proved to be more successful flying full with the airline planning an additional two flights a week in the near future. It should be said however, that the Aeroflot route to Bejing is considered to be one of the world's long haul bargains. The Il-96-300, for which the airline has seen marked improvements in availability and efficiency of late, is also planned to be used more intensively on the routes to Delhi and Dacca initially and other routes if it proves to be successful. The company also plans to lease additional Tu-134s to use on low volume routes in the Balkans, joining the Tu-154s on routes to Eastern Europe and in the winter destinations such as Athens, Barcelona and Lisbon. Other Western European destinations will be served with B-737s, B-767s and A-310s. Routes from other Russian centres outside of Moscow are also in the schedule with flights from St Petersburg, Vladivostok, Novosibirsk and Murmansk to destinations in Western Europe, Singapore and Anchorage, the latter two being from Vladivostok. The airline has announced its intention during the low season to lose some of its surplus capacity and has announced that it wants to dispose of substantial number of aircraft including 5 Il-86s, 7 Tu-154s and several of its aging fleet of Il-76s. Selling aircraft or even leasing them may prove to be a problem; the company is therefore considering the possibility of forming a separate company to provide wet lease aircraft to charter and regional carriers using the surplus aircraft.

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