Aeroflot’s traffic climbs as group improves its sustainable development indicators
Russia’s flagship airline group reduced CO2 emissions by 9.1 per cent in 2023 while recording traffic growth for the same period

Russia’s Aeroflot Group saw its traffic numbers climb last year, while the management focused on its environmental, social and governance targets, according to the group’s 2023 ESG-report published in early July. This is the second year Aeroflot has issued a separate document on ESG, which was earlier part of its annual report.
“In 2023 Aeroflot Group’s operations were aligned with the key priorities of the sustainable development, including safety, staff care, and playing an active role in the economic growth and social life, as well as environmental management,” said the group’s general director Sergey Alexandrovsky.
In its 100-anniversary year the group exceeded its performance target of 45 million passengers, and carried 47.3 million, making a significant contribution to improving the mobility of the Russian population and serving the country’s most remote communities. The airline’s domestic network included 61 cities. Besides, flag carrier Aeroflot, along with sister airlines Rossiya and low-cost carrier Pobeda, continued to link Russia with 18 countries.
Last year the group directed special attention to developing its regional hubs – the southern cluster, which comprises Sochi and Mineralnye Vody airports, and its Siberian hub at Krasnoyarsk. As of last year, 57.4 per cent of Aeroflot’s flights are operated outside Moscow. By 2030 the traffic through the group’s regional hubs is estimated to reach 7 million passengers.
Along with the improvement in operational performance, the group managed to reduce its CO2 emissions to 75.8 g/pkm, down 9.1 per cent on 2022. Fuel consumption was reduced by 6.2 per cent to 23.8 g/pkm due to higher seat load factor.
Aeroflot increased its environmental expenditures by almost 15 per cent to 128 million roubles last year. It also implemented a number of environmental initiatives – such as installing plastic and aluminum recycling kiosks in its offices, and introducing of separate waste collection practices at in Rossiya Airlines and Aeroflot Technics, as well as migration to electronic document management. These efforts resulted in a five per cent waste reduction over the year.
Reducing environmental footprint also included such achievements as:
• 100 per cent of used cabin crew uniforms is now recycled;
• Purchase of paper has reduced by 4.6 per cent to 256.8 tons (down 28.6 per cent on 2020)
• 3 tons of earphones, 215 tons of newspapers and magazines, 76 tons of glass were recycled
• Office staff collected 43,800 plastic bottles, 4,900 aluminum cans and 1.3 tons of paper for recycling.
Last year Aeroflot joined forces with environmental services Forest Preservation and Trillion to give passengers an opportunity to take environmental responsibility for their travel. Now every customer can compensate the carbon footprint of their trip by planting a tree in one of Russia’s national parks by purchasing a special certificate.
As the flag carrier of the Russian airline industry, Aeroflot supports domestic producers, small and medium business.
Aeroflot Group makes an important contribution to developing Russia’s aircraft manufacturing, as a major operator of Russian-made aircraft over many years. Currently Rossiya Airlines operates 78 Superjet 100 aircraft, head of the group emphasized. The group is also the launch customer for the new all-Russian aircraft – SJ100 and MC-21. By the end of the decade the group’s fleet is expected to grow to 500 aircraft by adding Russian-made airliners.
Last year the airline group almost tripled its goods and service procurement from Russia’s small and medium businesses, leading not just the industry, but Russia’s largest national enterprises.
Replacing foreign-made products with Russian analogues has been addressed with utmost attention – the share of Russian-made food and drinks has reached almost 90 per cent. Transfer to Russian software products is also in progress – in 2023 the share of software costs shifted to 92.4 per cent towards Russian IT products. Aeroflot airline alone is planning 80 initiatives for replacing foreign software with Russian products, of which 58 were launched in 2023 and are at different stages of implementation. Until the end of 2024 the group intends to replace 131 foreign-developed IT systems with Russian ones.
As of the end of 2023 Aeroflot Group employed 31,500 people. The group takes gender equality seriously – the share of women employed by the group exceeds 55 per cent of all staff, 38 per cent of management are women, and over 84 per cent of cabin crews. The number of women pilots in the 100-anniversary year reached 100.
In August 2023 Aeroflot was assigned ESG-report rating of Resg2, which reflects a high level of transparency and publicity in the area of sustainable development. “Compared to 2021, we improved our position and have climbed from the third to the second divisions of Russian corporations with best ESG practices”, Aeroflot chairman of the board Vitaliy Savelyev summed up.
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