UTair postpones eastern hub plans

UTair Aviation is postponing its plan to set up an eastern hub, General Director Andrey Martirosov told Show Observer. The carrier’s fleet is currently based at Tyumen, Surgut, Khanty-Mansiysk, and Moscow, and uses Vnukovo airport for transit purposes. Krasnoyarsk was previously named as a possible location for the airline’s second Siberian hub. Martirosov says however that passenger traffic figures on domestic routes are still not high enough to merit such a major project.

"Our strategic plans include the construction of an eastern hub, however, given the current state of air services, we are likely to postpone this: not than many people live beyond the Urals and they don’t fly to visit each other very often. We will not spend any money on this project in 2014-15. The investments required are very huge; for [the new hub] to start operating on its own, we would need to spend $1 billion on new aircraft, on personnel training, and on establishing a route network. This figure is approximate and based on 60 to 70 flights per day. If you operate 100 to 120 flights every day, you will need $2 billion," says Martirosov.