Airlines of Russia Takes Off

Release Date: 2008-10-22

Rostekhnologia and the Moscow government announced the formation of the Airlines of Russia company yesterday and recommended to its board of directors that it appoint Vnukovo International Airport co-owner Vitaly Vantsev the airline’s general director.

Rostekhnologia general director Sergey Chemezov stated that his company owns 50 percent plus one share of the new airline. The remainder will belong to Moscow. Chemezov promised that the new airline would have 20 million passengers by 2012. In 2007, Aeroflot, Russia’s largest airline, has 10.2 million passengers.

The new airlines will be made up of several existing airlines. Those are Atlant-Soyuz, which belongs to the Moscow government. Then the state packages in Russia Airlines, Kavminvodyavia, Orenburg Airlines, Saratov Airlines, Vladivostok Avia, Dalavia and the companies of the former AiRUnion alliance (KrasAir, Domodedovo Airlines and Samara) will be transferred to Rostekhnologia. The first step after the completion of the company’s registration on November 11 will be for the shareholders to contribute money to it. The airline’s authorized capital will be 100,000 rubles. Then shares in the airlines that will make up the company will be contributed. Then the federal state unitary enterprises that will belong to it (i.e., Russia Airline) will be divided into shares.

Vantsev coordination between the airlines has already begun. In the winter schedules, they will begin code sharing. A holding company will be formed to manage the wholly-owned subsidiaries. It will have bases at Vnukovo Airport in Moscow, Pulkovo Airport in St. Petersburg and at airports in Krasnoyarsk and Khabarovsk. The first task of the new company will be to restructure the $1-billion AiRUion debt. Atlant-Soyuz and Vnokovo Airport spent 2 billion rubles transporting AiRUnion passengers, and the Transportation and Finance Ministries are in negotiations with them for the compensation of that money.

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