Transaero Seeks Leading Role at Vnukovo

The St. Petersburg Times

Published: October 15, 2012 (Issue # 1730)

Maxim Stulov / Vedomosti Transaero is the country’s second-largest airline, after state-owned Aeroflot, and it has already outpaced the flagship carrier in the area of leisure travel.

MOSCOW — Transaero could account for up to a third of the 15 million passengers Vnukovo Airport expects to handle next year, as the airline continues an aggressive expansion.

The company has signed a memorandum with the airport to expand services to "not less than" 2 million passengers a year, Vedomosti reported.

Transaero, which also operates flights from Sheremetyevo and Domodedovo, began flying out of Vnukovo in April. It plans to start flying new routes to London, Yekaterinburg and the Kazakh cities of Astana and Almaty from Vnukovo in 2013.

Transaero is the country's second-largest airline, after state-owned Aeroflot, and it has already outpaced the flagship carrier in the area of leisure travel, flying 2.5 million tourists in 2011, up 42.8 percent from 2010.

Results for the first eight months of 2012 show that the airline's passenger turnover has risen to 27.1 billion passenger-kilometers, up 26.2 percent over the same period last year.

It was rated the sixth-largest tourist airline in the world, according to a survey published earlier this month in Airline Business, a Britain-based trade publication.

The airline opened 23 new routes from regional airports to international destinations last year, allowing it to cash in on growing affluence outside Moscow and St. Petersburg.

Earlier this month, Transaero began selling tickets to a host of U.S. destinations under a code-sharing agreement with Virgin Atlantic.