New routes bring 22.5% passenger growth (316 words)

Published: 7/12/2001

Krasnoyarsk Airlines (KrasAir) has reported its traffic for the first six months of 2001 with 22.5% growth in passengers carried to 369,108 passengers. Reflecting a recovery for the carrier after a soft 2000. According to Svetlana Volodina of Krasair both domestic and international routes showed growth with passengers on international routes up by 38.1% year-on-year at 60,510. Domestic routes grew by 19.8% to 308,598 passengers over H1 2000. The company's seat load factor was up by 3.4% at 65.1% and commercial load factor increased by 2.5% to 69% over the period. The company also performed 15% more flights than the same period last year. According to the airline, the growth in traffic has come through improvements in its efficiency that has delivered according to Krasair, productivity improvements of 7.8% to 8,700 tkm per hour that it attributes to large scale training programmes. The company also said a new strategy focussed on developing Krasnoyarsk as a transit hub with several new routes opened in the second half of 2000 contributing to H1 growth. The routes including: · Moscow-Kemerovo-Vladivostok · Magnitogorsk - Mineral Waters · Magnitogorsk - Krasnoyarsk in October 2000 · Moscow - Novokuznetsk - Blagoveshchensk in November 2000 The company also aggressively marketed its summer schedule to potential customers under the campaign banner Vostok (East) in the Far East, Sakhalin and Kamchatka. With the benefit of improving the carrier's charter business between May - October 2001, with the company expecting to carry 61% more passengers in the period at 140,000 travellers attracted the company believes by the airline's new Tu-204s, that they regard as being significantly more attractive to travellers than the previous Tu-154 and significantly more economical.

Article ID: 2640