Russia’s largest carriers increase their market share

Aeroflot’s traffic is growing on both domestic and international routes (Photo by Aeroflot)

Against the background of a general traffic decline trend, Russia’s largest airlines managed to increase their traffic, thus accumulating larger shares of the county’s stagnating air travel market. In April, Russian carriers’ cumulative traffic decreased 6.4%, whereas the top-five airlines demonstrated double-digit growth: Aeroflot – up 14.2%, S7 Airlines Group (which unites Sibir and Globus airlines) – up 21.1%, UTair – up 21.5%, Ural Airlines – up 25%, and Rossiya – up 38%.

Rossiya, which has recently merged three of Aeroflot’s subsidiaries (Rossiya, Donavia and OrenAir), made it to the top-5 list only in April, outperforming sister-company Pobeda, Aeroflot’s low-cost division.

As a result of the traffic reshuffle, the market share of the top-5 carriers continued to grow and reached 71% in April, up from 70.2% in March, 69.1% in February and 67.8% in January.

From January until April, top 35 Russia’s airlines carried 99.1% of all passengers traveling into and out of the country, up from 84.6% for the same period last year.