International traffic for Russian airlines surges 54.2%

Traffic growth on routes beyond the CIS demonstrated a record growth in May (Leonid Faerberg / Transport-Photo.com)

Russian airlines’ traffic growth on routes outside the CIS set a long-unseen record of 54.2% in May, resulting in 3.063 million passengers carried, the Federal Air Transport Agency (FATA) reports.

The growth rate had been picking up since the beginning of the year, with 30.4% reported for January and 44.7% for April. The total number of passengers that traveled with Russian carriers outside Russia, including to CIS countries, reached 3.655 million in May (up 46.9% year-on-year).

Since the beginning of 2017, Russian airlines’ total passenger numbers have grown 22.1% compared to the first five months of 2016, reaching 35.835 million passengers.

Virtually all of the country’s 35 major airlines have improved on their traffic and seat load factor figures since the beginning of the year. FATA reports a traffic growth of 13.1% for Aeroflot, 78% for Rossiya Airlines, 3.3% for S7 Airlines, 22.4% for UTair Aviation, and 29% for Ural Airlines.