Russian carriers’ traffic growth rate reaches 15%

Russian airlines carried 6.5 million passengers in November (Photo by Leonid Faerberg / Transport–Photo.com)

In November 2016 Russian carriers’ cumulative traffic growth rates reached an impressive 15.1%, compared to the same month of last year. The country’s carriers served 6.5 million passengers in November, according to a report published by Federal Air Transport Agency. However, the uptick is apparently statistical and is due to Transaero’s exit from the market one year ago.

At the end of November 2015, which was the first full month without Transaero–then country’s second largest carrier–Russian airlines’ traffic plunged a record 11.8%, to 5.5 million passengers. It may be assumed that were it not for this dive, this November’s results would have been more moderate. To support this statement, the operational results of the recent months have shown slight decline, which gave way to slight growth. This suggests a conclusion that the industry has just now more or less recovered from Transaero’s collapse and redistributed this major airline’s passengers among other market players.

This includes the country’s top five carriers, all of which demonstrated at least double-digit growth in November 2016. Aeroflot’s traffic grew 12.2%, S7 Airlines 10%, Rossiya (part of Aeroflot Group, the airline merged with sister carriers Donavia and OrenAir early this year) 126.9%, UTair 27.9% and Ural Airlines 28.3%.