Sochi and Kaliningrad fastest growing Russian airports in Q1

Sochi Airport's traffic increased 42% in Q1 2016 (Photo by Alexander V. Solomin / Wikipedia)

Airports in Sochi and Kaliningrad grew at the highest rate among Russia’s top-20 airports by first quarter results. According to the data published by the Federal Air Transport Agency, compared to Q1 2015, the traffic at Sochi increased by 42% to 893,200 passengers; in Kaliningrad, it grew by 24.4% to 327,100 passengers.

Vnukovo suffered the worst traffic plunge—a result of Transaero’s exit from the market. Its Q1 results came in at 25.5% worse than in the same period of last year. Having served 2.234 million passengers, the airport ceded its position in the top-3 list to St. Petersburg’s Pulkovo, which also faced a traffic decline of 6.3%, to 2.314 million passengers.

Sheremetyevo retains its leading position among Russian airports. In Q1 it served 6.901 million passengers against 6.325 million at the same time last year, showing a 9.1% increase. Domodedovo’s traffic remained almost level: +0.2% to 5.732 million passengers.

Notably, most airports in the top-20 rating managed to increase their traffic by riding the wave of surging domestic travel. Negative results, apart from the mentioned Vnukovo and Pulkovo, were found in Rostov (–1.6%), Mineralnye Vody (–6.6%), Khabarovsk (–1.5%), Krasnoyarsk (–4.8%) and Irkutsk (–4.3%).

Cumulative traffic served by Russian airports in the first quarter grew 1.6% YOY and reached 29.859 million passengers. Several airports outside the top-20 list showed over 100% growth: Ulyanovsk-Vostochny (+944.5%; 162^nd position), Bryansk (+638.0%; 170^th position), Cheboksary (+343.4%; 67^th position), Sabetta (+190.2%; 59^th position), Kirov (+185.6%; 63^rd position), Ust-Kamchatsk (+128.6%; 239^th position), and Bugulma (+120.6%; 93^rd position).