The number of passengers on domestic flights reached a maximum in 15 years

The volume of domestic passenger air transportation in January-April amounted to 22.5 million people, writes RBC with reference to the data of the Federal Air Transport Agency. This is the maximum value for the last 15 years and is 15.5% higher than the results of the same period last year.

The number of passengers on international routes also increased: 6.3 million people were transported in the first four months, which is 27.5% more than in 2022, but 54.3% less than the record 2019.

As Evgeny Yankilevich, general director of the Novosibirsk airport Tolmachevo, explained in a conversation with RBC, the closure of international markets due to sanctions contributed to the increase in domestic traffic, as a result, flights appeared that were not even in the Soviet years. S7 Group CEO Dmitry Kudelkin previously drew attention to a significant increase in domestic tourism, the newspaper recalls.

The forecast for passenger traffic for the whole of 2023 is 101 million passengers, Minister of Transport Vitaly Savelyev said at the end of March. Of these, 81.9 million are domestic passenger traffic, i.e. the indicator is expected to grow by 5.4% compared to 2022, but will decrease by 6.4% compared to 2021. This dynamics will be affected by the reduction of state support: the total budget of the three transportation subsidy programs this year is 25 billion rubles, which will allow transporting more than 3.8 million passengers on 412 routes. In 2022, 27.2 billion rubles were allocated for these programs, thanks to which 4.8 million passengers were transported on 598 routes.

The fact that the number of passengers carried in 2023 will depend directly on how much subsidies airlines will receive earlier spoke experts interviewed by Vedomosti. In 2022, Russian airlines transported a total of 95 million people (-14% by 2021).

In 2022, 100 billion rubles were allocated to subsidize domestic transportation, which the Federal Air Transport Agency distributed among 32 airlines, of which half of the funds were received by the group “Aeroflot“. Carriers were also compensated 19.4 billion rubles. for the return of tickets for flights canceled due to external restrictions. Another 2.9 billion rubles. was distributed among cargo airlines. In total, according to the Federal Air Transport Agency, the domestic aviation industry received a record 172 billion rubles last year. subsidies from the budget.