Russian airlines fly 8.2% more passengers in Nov
MOSCOW. Dec 25 (Interfax) - Passenger volumes on Russian airlines increased by 8.2% year-on-year in November 2009, Rosaviatsia, the federal civil aviation agency, said in its materials.
Passenger numbers grew 12.8% to 1.865 million passengers on internal routes and 2.8% to 1.483 million on international routes.
Airlines flew 41.6 million passengers in January-November, down 11.3% year-on-year.
The country's five biggest airlines carried 22.8 million passengers in the 11M, down 9.2% year-on-year. The five, which are Aeroflot , Transaero, S7 (Sibir) , Rossiya and UTair , carried 55% of all passengers. Only Transaero and UTair carried more than in January-November 2008.
Results for Russia's 15 biggest airlines in 11M 2009:
| Ranking | Airline | 11M 2009 | % change | Seat occupancy, % |
| 1 | Aeroflot | 8 014 801 | -6.9 | 69.5 |
| 2 | Transaero | 4 650 063 | 1.4 | 81.9 |
| 3 | S7 | 4 181 283 | -25.1 | 76.6 |
| 4 | Rossiya | 2 768 460 | -16.8 | 71.7 |
| 5 | UTair | 3 197 713 | 6.1 | 73.3 |
| Total for top five | 22 812 320 | -19.2 | - | |
| 6 | Orenburg Airlines | 1 494 696 | 40.5 | 96.6 |
| 7 | Urals Airlines | 1 392 411 | 1.5 | 67.2 |
| 8 | Vladivostok Avia | 1 003 486 | 22 | 76.9 |
| 9 | VIM-Avia | 1 206 427 | -22.2 | 79.8 |
| 10 | NordWind | 798 616 | - | 93.0 |
| 11 | Atlant-Soyuz | 935 850 | -33.1 | 77.4 |
| 12 | Globus | 978 750 | 87.1 | 79.9 |
| 13 | Donavia | 1 141 975 | -9.4 | 80.4 |
| 14 | Yakutia | 615 282 | 21.8 | 72.1 |
| 15 | Red Wings | 671 424 | 59.1 | 90.1 |
| Total for 15 airlines | 33 051 237 | -2.9 |
The Transport Ministry forecasts passenger volumes will drop 11% this year as a whole to 44 million-45 million.