vlad.tribnet.com / Issue #146 / Business / Reading article...

Hundreds of passengers were stranded in Moscow airports following Orient Avia’s announcement July 10 that it would cease activity due to bankruptcy.

Orient Avia was one of the four major Russian airlines, which also included Transaero, Domododevsky Airlines and Aeroflot. Its main routes were Vladivostok-Moscow and Kamchatka-Moscow.

The company announced at a shareholders’ meeting in Moscow that it had lost 80 billion rubles since its founding. It said the Ministry of Defense and the Federal Border Service owe the company 30 billion rubles from last winter.

Orient-Avia had agreements with the divisions to provide servicemen summer trips to Moscow from Far Eastern points. Aeroflot, DalMoreProdukt, FESCO and the Kazan Aviation Manufacture Association founded Orient Avia in 1994 with Vladivostok, Nakhodka and Vostochny ports. Charter capital was declared at 160 billion rubles, but Orient Avia General Manager Amiran Kurtanidze said at the shareholders’ meeting that the investors had paid only 50 percent of that.

A meeting attendee anonymously told a Vladivostok newspaper reporter that Kurtanidze had announced several times that he had found buyers for the controlling stock of the company, including Aeroflot and Moscow City Hall. However, the deals fell through, said the attendee, and Kurtanidze has resigned.

Meanwhile, chaos reigned in airline ticket offices and airports in Moscow and Vladivostok as passengers with summer plans rushed to find other ways to get to their destination.

Lucy Jones, a Transaero passenger, said she waited over three hours to be served July 16 as ticket agents dealt with inquiries from Orient Avia passengers hoping to get a place on another airline.

“It was pandemonium in there,” said Jones, a freelance journalist living in Vladivostok. Domodedovsky Airlines has agreed to take 50-55 Orient Avia passengers per day for the next few weeks, but many passengers still have no transportation, as evident from phone activity to the Primoryan Airline Company, an agency that sells tickets on Transaero.

“We’re getting endless numbers of calls” from Orient Avia passengers, said Elvira Goncharova, deputy manager of the company.

The border guard service in Primorye said its servicemen can still go free to and from Moscow this summer — by train, which takes seven days.

“But since they get at least 45 days’ vacation, it’s maybe not such a problem,” said Tatyana Pozhidaeva, a spokesperson for the service’s press center.

Orient Avia had to make three emergency landings since the spring, its most recent in the beginning of July.