Aurora explained to the Accounts Chamber what is wrong with subsidies for flights to the Far Eastern Federal District – Kommersant

The general director of the Aurora airline, Konstantin Sukhorebrik, wrote a letter to the auditor of the Accounts Chamber, Valery Bogomolov. In it, he responded to the department’s comments to the company made following an inspection in January-August 2023. The Accounts Chamber accuses Aurora of wasting subsidies on flights in the Far Eastern District (FEFD), as well as of untimely launching ticket sales for discounted flights.

In a letter from Konstantin Sukhorebrik, which is in the possession of RBCit is said that it is impossible to open the sale of tickets for subsidized flights at the specified time, since the annual process of selecting carriers for subsidies is completed at the end of the previous year, and the contract is signed after the selection.

“The selection of applications for 2022 ended on December 31, 2021, that is, one day before the start of flights. And the agreement was actually concluded later than the start of flights,” explained Mr. Sukhorebrik.

Aurora also did not agree with the auditors’ claim related to the number of flights on certain socially significant routes. The Accounts Chamber stated that at the end of 2022, the carrier did not perform 1,516 flights as planned. Among the destinations for which flights were not operated at all are Krasnoyarsk—Komsomolsk-on-Amur (plan: 124 flights) and Ulan-Ude—Aginskoye (plan: 90 flights). According to the general director of Aurora, flights on these routes were not carried out due to the lack of infrastructure at the airports. He notes that in 2022, there is no anti-icing treatment at the Komsomolsk-on-Amur airport during the winter season, and the landing site at the airport in the village of Aginskoye is abandoned.

RBC notes that in November 2022, Konstantin Sukhorebrik already announced problems with the infrastructure at these airports. The government of Transbaikalia tried to restore the landing site in Aginskoye, but did not manage to do this before the end of the year. The RBC Accounts Chamber confirmed receipt of the response from the general director of Aurora. The department also stated that when applying for participation in the selection, Aurora indicated routes to Aginskoye and Komsomoslsk-on-Amur, which confirmed its readiness to operate these flights.

The state program for operating flights on socially important routes in the Far Eastern Federal District cost 5.7 billion rubles in 2022, and 5.9 billion in 2023. Last year, Aurora received 1.06 billion rubles in subsidies from the Federal Air Transport Agency for such flights.