Airline passenger traffic is back to five-year-old levels

In the first half of 2023, Russian airlines increased traffic by 18% year-on-year, to 47.5 million people, Transport Minister Vitaly Savelyev said. This figure is also 18% lower than in 2019 and only 1 million people higher than in 2017. Experts believe that the target of 101 million passengers set by the Ministry of Transport will be reached by the end of the year. But some sources believe that the increase in traffic is fraught with the rapid depletion of the fleet of aircraft, which there is nothing to replace.

Passenger traffic of airlines grew in the first half of the year by 18%, in annual terms to 47.5 million people, Minister of Transport Vitaly Savelyev said at a meeting of the President of the Russian Federation with members of the government. This is 18% lower than in 2019, when the industry was not yet affected by covid and the consequences of military operations in Ukraine, and is approximately the level of the first half of 2017, when 46.2 million passengers were transported.

The Ministry of Transport predicts a passenger traffic of 101 million people or even higher by the end of the year (against 95 million people in 2022). Experts consider this to be feasible, given that in the second half of the year, traffic is usually slightly higher than in the first.

As in 2022, 80% of passenger traffic will be on domestic flights, of which half will be on interregional flights, experts expect. Novosibirsk and Yekaterinburg stand out in particular, having “intercepted” a significant share of passenger traffic from Moscow airports due to the development of the route network, says Dmitry Gorin, vice president of the Russian Union of Tourism Industry. Traditionally, Sochi and Minvody will remain in demand.

Passenger traffic on international routes, according to the Ministry of Transport, may reach about 20 million people – an increase of 12% year-on-year. According to Vitaly Savelyev, Russian airlines now operate direct flights to 24 countries. Including foreign carriers, direct flights are available to 36 countries, Mr. Gorin adds. He notes that Turkey will remain the growth driver, where 3 million people can fly in the summer. Thailand quickly recovered to pre-pandemic levels, with 800,000 visitors in the first half of the year. Passenger traffic in the UAE increased by 60%: if before 2020 it was about 400 thousand people a year, this year it should be about 1.1 million. 900 thousand tourists. The main increase, according to Dmitry Gorin, will be provided by air communication with China “subject to the implementation of the project of electronic visas and visa-free group trips.”

Vitaly Savelyev said that, despite rising costs and a threefold reduction in industry subsidies compared to 2022 (from 174 billion rubles to 58 billion rubles), airlines manage to contain the growth in ticket prices.

Many interlocutors of Kommersant in the industry believe that the artificial containment of tariffs in order to maintain passenger traffic can lead to premature departure of aircraft against the backdrop of a shortage of spare parts and the impossibility of extending the resource.

Some experts believe that airlines that actively operate SSJs will be forced to drastically reduce traffic by 2024. In the spring, at the ATO conference, a representative of Rusline Airlines said that, according to the carrier’s flight program, the fleet’s resources would last for three years.

Remarks about the risks of depleting the resource of the fleet really sound in the industry, says Oleg Panteleev, Executive Director of Aviaport. However, none of the largest operators of the main jet fleet publicly announced problems with maintaining airworthiness and the need to save the resource. In addition, the expert recalls, the Ministry of Transport stated that airlines will be able to operate foreign aircraft until 2030, and therefore the regulator has no reason to revise the targets for passenger traffic.

In the aviation industry, traffic is traditionally paid more attention than financial metrics, says Alexander Gushchin, director of the ACRA corporate ratings group. He notes that it has been and remains important for carriers to maintain their market shares in physical terms, and for aviation authorities this is the most understandable indicator of transport accessibility.

Aigul Abdullina