Traffic through Novosibirsk grows 5%

At the end of the first six months of 2016, passenger traffic through Novosibirsk’s Tolmachevo Airport grew 5% year-on-year. The airport served 1.66 million passengers and processed 7,873 tons of cargo. The number of aircraft movements at OVB remained largely the same, with a total of 9,658 take-off and landing operations (up 0.5% YOY).

The list of the most popular destinations from Novosibirsk includes Yekaterinburg, Kazan, Samara and Sochi, in Russia, and Almaty, Khudzhand and Yerevan, in the CIS countries. Among international routes, most passengers traveled to leisure destinations in Thailand (Krabi), Greece (Saloniki and Heraklion), Cyprus (Larnaca) and Munich in Germany. Newly introduced destinations such as Monastir and Hammamet, in Tunisia, and Shanghai, in China, also proved popular.

The increasing number of transfer passengers is a major contributor to traffic growth, the airport’s representative explained in a statement. Particularly, the ongoing project aimed at generating transfer flows, called M2 Closed Fare, developed jointly with the airport’s base carrier S7 Airlines and other partner airlines, has demonstrated positive results. The airport served 268,300 transit passengers in the first six months of the year and has plans to increase their share in the total trafic to 13%, which is close to a figure demonstrated by Moscow’s airports. The airport expects the number of Chinese and South Korean tourists traveling through Novosibirsk to Moscow, St. Petersburg and Sochi to reach 70,000 at the end of the year.

Novosibirsk Airport is owned by Russian Novaport airport holding and is the largest hub in Siberia, serving a region with the population of over 9 million people. In 2015, the airport served 3.6 million passengers (down 6.4% YOY) and is Russia’s 8th largest airport by traffic.