Russian airlines boost passenger services 17.5% to 7.7 mln in Nov
MOSCOW. Dec 8 (Interfax) - Russian airlines carried 7.7 million passengers in November 2017, 17.5% more than in the same month last year, Russia's Federal Air Transport Agency (Rosaviatsia) said, citing preliminary data.
Passenger turnover rose 9.2% to 17.8 billion passenger-km.
Seat occupancy was 78.3%, up 0.9 percentage points from November 2016, and the passenger load factor grew 3.1 pp to 69.2%.
The five biggest airlines all flew more passengers in November: Aeroflot carried 2.5 million passengers, up 12% year-on-year; the Aeroflot Group's Rossiya Airlines - 639,400 (+3%), Sibir (S7) - 761,300 (+22%); Ural Airlines - 573,500 (+23.7%); and UTair - 583,400 (+8.1%).
Russian airlines carried a record 97 million passengers in January-November, up 19.1% year-on-year, the previous high being 93.1 million in 2014. Passenger turnover grew 20.2% to 238.9 billion passenger-km and commercial load grew 1.2 pp to 69%.
"It is anticipated that Russian airlines will carry up to 105 million passengers in the year as a whole," Rosaviatsia said.
Transport Minister Maxim Sokolov has said the figure might be 100 million. Airlines carried 88.6 million passengers in 2016, down 3.8% from 2015.