Aeroflot Group increased passenger traffic by 1.5 times in March

Group “Aeroflot“(includes airlines”Aeroflot”, “Rossiya” and “Victory”) in March 2023 increased passenger traffic year-on-year by 50.3% to 3.3 million people. In March last year, the group carried 2.2 million passengers. This is reported in the Aeroflot report for the first quarter of 2023. In January-March 2023, the group’s passenger traffic increased by 11.3% to 9.5 million people.

The occupancy of seats in the group for the first quarter increased from 76.3% to 86.3%. In March, the figure increased from 79.5% to 86.3%. The Group also increased the number of flights by 0.9% from 63,957 to 64,548.

In January-March 2023, the parent airline of the group “Aeroflot» increased passenger traffic by 28.5% to 4.8 million people. Passenger traffic on domestic routes increased by 35.5% to 3.4 million people, on international routes – by 14.9% to 1.47 million people. In March, the passenger traffic of the parent company of the group increased by 2.1 times compared to March 2022 and amounted to 1.75 million passengers. Seat occupancy on all airline flights increased from 69% in the first quarter of 2022 to 84.5% in January-March 2023.

In the first quarter of 2023, Aeroflot’s freight and mail traffic fell by 3.7%, from 30,387 tons to 29,252 tons. 22.5% to 11,806 tons

With a 14% drop in total international flights from 9,866 to 8,485, the carrier’s total flights increased by 3.9%, from 29,910 to 31,069. This was driven by a 12.7% increase in domestic flights, from 20,044 to 22,584.

Fedor Borisov, chief expert at the HSE Institute for Transport Economics and Transport Policy, says that there is nothing sensational about the recovery of Aeroflot’s performance: the real state of the market and the airline itself can be judged by the performance of the next months. “A sharp drop in the passenger traffic of Aeroflot and all other Russian airlines in March last year is associated with the beginning of the NWO in Ukraine (February 24, 2022 – Vedomosti), after which a significant part of international destinations were closed, and the uncertainty factor influenced domestic airlines” , he recalls.

The expert notes that the restructuring of the market began at the beginning of the pandemic in 2020. The share of domestic destinations in the structure of airline traffic has increased, the profitability of such flights with a comparable load is lower than on international routes. But ceteris paribus, an increase in load allows you to increase the profitability of a flight, explains Borisov. “Airlines are trying to use the fleet as efficiently as possible in the current conditions. The restructuring of the market continues,” he sums up.

“Aeroflot“is actively developing transportation from regional bases, so the increase in the number of flights is natural,” says Oleg Panteleev, Executive Director of Aviaport. He added that when forming the flight program, Aeroflot “is not afraid of the accelerated depletion of the fleet’s resource,” since the company relies on a strong aviation technical base represented by a specialized department and a subsidiary of Aeroflot-Technics, as well as plans to receive Russian-made aircraft . “When new Russian equipment comes to the market, it will be delivered to Aeroflot first of all,” the expert notes. In addition, the main shareholder represented by the state expects Aeroflot to solve social problems, Panteleyev added.

In 2022, after Russia launched an NWO in Ukraine, the US, UK, EU countries and their allies imposed sanctions on the Russian air transport industry. A ban has been introduced on the leasing by Russian airlines of aircraft owned by Western lessors, on the supply of components and engines both to Russian aircraft factories and to carriers operating aircraft that have already been created. In March, Henrik Hololei, head of the European Commission’s Directorate General for Mobility and Transport, said the goal of the sanctions was “the destruction of Russian civil aviation.”

In response, in June last year, the Russian government adopted a program for the development of the air transport industry until 2030, to which more than 770 billion rubles will be allocated. These funds will be used to support the aviation industry and subsidize domestic flights.

In September 2022 at the Eastern Economic Forum “Aeroflot“signed with the United Aircraft Corporation” (UAC, is part of Rostec) an agreement of intent until 2030 to put into operation 339 Russian-made aircraft (210 medium-haul MS-21, 89 short-haul SSJ-New, 40 Tu-214 aircraft), the total cost of which will be about 1 trillion rubles. The airline will not buy planes at its own expense, it will take them on lease.