New interline agreement extends destination options (275 words)

Published: 5/8/2001

On 24th April, Siberia Airlines (Sibir) signed an interline agreement with Air China. According to Vladislav Koshkin, Head of Sales at Sibir, the agreement gives the airline the opportunity to provide its customers with a much broader range of destinations, by offering connections to Air China's 80 destination network, centred in Beijing, with hubs in Tianjin, Shanghai, and Hohhot. It should also increase Sibir's sales in China. Igor Volkov, spokesman for Sibir, said that the agreement with Air China would work as standard interline agreement and, if the relationship develops successfully, Sibir would open new regular routes to China from centres such as Irkutsk. Sibir has been operating regular scheduled routes to China since the end of 1998, but has been flying charter flights since 1992. Currently, it operates flights to China from Novosibirsk: twice weekly and three times a week to Urumqi. All the Chinese flights are closely coordinated with ongoing flights to major Russian, CIS, Middle Eastern and Western European destinations, in order to encourage the use of Tolmachevo for transit. Sibir has its representative and ticket sales offices both in Beijing and Urumqi. The Air China agreement adds to Sibir's existing interline agreements: one with Lufthansa, signed in July 2000 and one with Uzbekistan Airlines, signed in June 1999. Sibir attributed its agreement with Lufthansa, at least in part, to the strong 29% traffic growth reported in the first quarter of 2001.

Article ID: 2517