Russian airlines’ January through July traffic and RPKs decline

:: Domodedovo airport

Russian airlines carried collectively 61.2 million passengers in the first seven months of 2025, according to the country’s aviation authority Rosaviatsiya. The figure is 1.8 per cent below the same period of 2024. RPKs also declined 0.7 per cent to 160.7 million.

Meanwhile Russian airports also saw a downward trend in passenger numbers – 121.8 million passengers, 0.3 per cent less than last year.

The only traffic segment that showed growth was international routes beyond the CIS countries – 9.7 million passengers, up 7.4 per cent on seven months of 2024. But with CIS countries factored in, international traffic grew 1.0 per cent only to 15.2 million passengers.

At the same time, domestic traffic declined 2.7 per cent to 46.8 million passengers.

Notably, the seat load factor added further 0.4 percentage points reaching 89.1 per cent, which, coupled with decreasing traffic, signals capacity deficit.

“The domestic traffic decline is attributable to the constraints in fleet capacities experienced by Russian airlines. Additionally, restrictions imposed in a number of airports due to security concerns contributed to decreased number of travelers in the summer months,” Irina Poleshkina, senior research associate at Moscow State Technical University of Civil Aviation commented.

The TOP-5 Russian airlines by passenger traffic has remained unchanged:

• Aeroflot
• Pobeda
• S7 Airlines
• Rossiya
• Ural Airlines

Their market share continued to increase, reaching 70.3 per cent of all Russian passenger traffic.