vlad.tribnet.com / Issue #151 / Business / Reading article...

Russian aviation company officials met for the first time Sept. 30 to discuss pressuring the federal government for promised funds aimed at attracting more business on cross-country airline flights.

Aviation companies haven’t received the money Yeltsin promised in a pre-election decree that offered 50 percent discounts for all Far East residents flying to western Russia. Directors agreed to urge Yeltsin to make good on his promise, as such discounts would increase ticket purchases for Moscow flights.

Airlines currently lose money on Moscow/Vladivostok round trip flights because ticket sales do not match the cost of increasing fuel prices or airplane upkeep.

In response to the waning interest in these flights, directors agreed to draft a proposal to raise prices simultaneously by as much as 100,000 rubles later in the year. VladivostokAvia Deputy General Manager Igor Begelfer said, however, that raising prices at the same time would be ineffective because so many companies now offer individual discounts to attract more passengers.

In an efforts to increase ticket sales, Vladivostok Avia and Aeroflot will offer more flights from Vladivostok to the Pacific Rim, Begelfer said. Aeroflot is expected to assist in the completion of Vladivostok’s international terminal, which currently sits half-built but is crucial if more passenger flights are to start arriving from outside Russia’s borders. Aeroflot will also create a base nearby to house its own planes.

Begelfer said, however, that flights will not increase in or out of Vladivostok because the runway was not designed to handle modern planes with wider fuselages that most companies are now upgrading to. Airline fleets are aging, and within two years all companies will need to switch over to the newer planes.

Because the airport is 51 percent federally owned, Belfeger said, companies must agree to pressure the government to fund a reconstruction project.

Despite these setbacks, airlines are still in discussions with airports in Russia and the Pacific rim to add flights to Vladivostok. Representatives were most optimistic about flights from Kaliningrad and St. Petersburg, as well as a flight from Odessa via Kiev.

Companies have considered flights direct from Taiwan, but Taiwanese officials want their country’s first Russian flight to go to Moscow. Aeroflot was also in negotiations with United States airport officials to settle on a flight from San Francisco to Vladivostok via Honolulu, but the deal was abandoned because the United States requires all Far East flights to go through the developing Anchorage airport.

Anatoly Medetsky contributed to this article.