Pulkovo pulls the sky to the East – Newspaper Kommersant No. 214 (7415) of 11/18/2022

Pulkovo Airport asks the Ministry of Transport to simplify flights to St. Petersburg for foreign airlines from the Middle East, Asia and Africa. Pulkovo expects that, coupled with a visa-free regime for friendly countries, this will attract tourists to the Russian Federation, and it will make it easier for Russian passengers to access abroad. Experts, however, believe that the removal of flight quotas for Asian carriers will not be able to replace European traffic.

Pulkovo asked the Ministry of Transport to liberalize the agreements on air communication between St. Petersburg and a number of friendly countries. As the head of the airport, Leonid Sergeev, said on the sidelines of the Transport Week, we are talking about the removal of current quotas for foreign airlines from the CIS, the Middle East, as well as Asian and African countries.

As specified at the airport, in September-November, he held “strategic sessions” with airlines and airports in Bahrain, Vietnam, India, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Oman, Saudi Arabia and Turkey. Negotiations are ongoing with potential carriers, including Air Algerie (Algeria), Air Arabia, Fly Dubai and Etihad and a subsidiary of the Hungarian low-cost carrier Wizz Air Abu Dhabi (UAE). There are also dialogues with El Al (Israel), Flynas, Gulf Air, Vistara and IndiGo (India), Kuwait AW, Oman Air (Oman), Saudia (Saudi Arabia), VietJet, Vietnam Airlines (Vietnam).

Pulkovo wants to introduce an open skies regime for friendly regions, which has been introduced at the airport since 2020 for 30 European countries for five years, but due to the pandemic, it has not been fully operational, a source in the Ministry of Transport explained to Kommersant.

It was about the “seventh freedom of the air”: a foreign carrier could fly into Russia from a third country or fly there. “This is a rational move in the right direction, we expect that all interdepartmental issues will be resolved at the beginning of winter,” the source added to Kommersant.

Pulkovo emphasizes that liberalization will not bring the expected effect without the introduction of a visa-free regime or an electronic visa with friendly countries, and “ensuring barrier-free payments” will also help. The airport does not specify how much it is supposed to increase passenger traffic due to flights of foreign carriers. According to the FSB border service, before the pandemic, 5 million people entered the Russian Federation for tourism purposes in 2019, of which 1.5 million came from China. India and Turkey were in the top 10: 76.8 thousand and 51.7 thousand, respectively.

As Kommersant was told at the Committee for Tourism Development of St. Petersburg, in January-October, about 180 thousand foreign tourists visited the city, of which 10% were from the Middle East.

Only India and Saudi Arabia will show the greatest demand as restrictions are lifted, believes Sergey Voitovich, head of the PCT Committee on International Activities. Taking into account pent-up demand and the geography of flights that has changed due to COVID-19, the passenger flow from these countries will amount to 100,000 people during the summer at the first stage, he believes. The indicators will depend on the marketing strategies of tour operators and the introduction of a visa-free regime. It is not necessary to count on a noticeable incoming passenger flow from Africa and Turkey at all, Sergei Voitovich notes.

The head of the Airport Association, Viktor Gorbachev, also doubts that Pulkovo will be able to attract significant foreign passenger traffic: “Turkish and Arab carriers fly to Russia without problems at the limit of demand.” He believes that Europe will not allow airlines to fly from Russia and “flights from Beijing to Milan via St. Petersburg should not be expected.”

The open skies regime with Asia turned out to be quite effective in Vladivostok, but it will not work to extrapolate the experience to St. Petersburg, the expert is sure.

Unlike Kaliningrad, where open skies were introduced in October, St. Petersburg is a destination in itself for Asian tourists, objected the head of Aviaport, Oleg Panteleev. At the same time, he agrees that European regulators are unlikely to support the flights of Asian carriers from Russia. The effect of liberalization will largely depend on the implementation of the visa-free regime and the return of tourists from China to the Russian Federation, he says: “Europeans could afford to fly to St. Petersburg for the weekend, but for Asia, taking into account flight time, this is a completely different product.”

Resistance is expected from within Russia. So, when in 2019 Russian airlines were already actively opposed to lifting restrictions for foreign competitors in St. Petersburg, fearing a loss of market share. Oleg Panteleev notes that now Aeroflot is focused on flights abroad from Moscow and the regions, and foreigners do not pose a threat to Pulkovo-based Rossiya with a medium-haul fleet. However, a Kommersant source close to the Aeroflot group emphasizes that “in the face of significant difficulties on international routes due to the limited fleet, in which Russian aviation now exists, such indulgences will have negative consequences for domestic carriers.”

Aigul Abdullina