vlad.tribnet.com / Issue #155 / Business / Reading article...

A new Aeroflot route connecting Vladivostok directly to the United States will make travel across the Pacific cheaper and faster. Cutting out stop-over points along the Far Eastern coast, the flight will take just over six hours to arrive on American soil.

But krai officials will target more than just passenger convenience with the Vladivostok-Anchorage-Seattle flight. The new offering represents a budding relationship with airline giant Aeroflot, said Gennady Nesov, Chairman of the krai’s Shipping, Sea Ports, Communications, and Transportation Committee. This relationship, Nesov believes, is crucial if Primorye wants to edge in on Pacific Rim markets – a task that’s taking longer than many businessmen expected.

Two other carriers, Korean and Alaska airlines, also serve the United States. But Alaska stops in other Russian Far Eastern cities on the way to and from Vladivostok, and Korean requires a stop-over in Seoul.

Aeroflot, with its 125,000 employees and twelve new Boeing 777s, has expansion plans of its own. Now that it has thrown its weight into the Far East, Aeroflot will help krai officials take concrete steps toward development, rather than making empty promises, Nesov said.

The airline recently agreed to help finish Vladivostok’s international airport terminal, as well as find investors to cover much of the remaining $1.5 million in construction costs for the terminal interior and airport runway, which cannot accommodate long-range flights to the region. A wider runway and the terminal itself will be finished by June of 1998, Nesov said.

“Aeroflot sees and understands that Vladivostok is part of the Pacific Rim, but only when the international terminal is finished can we begin launching these flights extensively,” he said.

Once that project is complete, Aeroflot hopes to reap new business from a host of cities, and the krai will have stronger links to the Pacific Rim. Aeroflot launched a route from Vladivostok to Singapore via Bangkok Nov 23, and has plans to connect with Taipei, Hanoi, Sydney, Hokkaido, and Wellington, New Zealand within five years.

A more powerful base in Primorye will also give Aeroflot, and Russia, greater weight in cutting deals with the United States. When Soviet Union broke up in 1991, agreements with the U.S. stipulated that all flights to and from the Far East must pass through Anchorage, Alaska. The move was implemented to bring more economic activity to America’s sparsely populated northern state.

The new flight – primarily geared toward Seattle but with a 1 1/2 hour layover in Anchorage — is an enormous boon to Alaska/Russia trade, said Patricia Eckert, Anchorage Airport’s marketing director. “Any time you have non-stop air service to a foreign point, it’s going to have a stimulating effect on the economy,” she said.

Despite the advantages for Alaska, Aeroflot wants to ax the mandatory Anchorage stopover.

“This stopover noticeably increases operating costs, which is reflected in the ticket price,” said Aeroflot’s Far Eastern representative, Sergei Bystrov. The issue will arise at the next round of talks, he said.

Officials in Anchorage vow to to lobby against this, according to Eckert.