OREANDA-NEWS. During January-July 2007 UTair (UTair Aviation, CJSC) carried 1,593,598 passengers, up 20.8 percent from the same period in 2006.

In addition, the company also made substantial advances in other performance indicators in the reporting period. In particular, passenger traffic rose 25.6 percent.

In the period of January-July, mail and cargo volume carried by the airline’s transport aircraft went up by 57.6 percent and 31.3 percent respectively. UTair’s airplanes logged 70,461 flight hours, up 18.4 percent from the previous year.

Helicopter flying time amounted to 35,399 hours, or 7.2 percent more than in the same period in 2006. The volume of cargo carried by helicopters increased 23.9 percent to 34,006.2 tonnes over the period in question

According to UTair’s business plan, its airplanes and helicopters will spend over 200,000 hours in the air in 2007,and the company anticipates to carry more than 3m passengers , as well as introduce some thirty new routes. Helicopter operations will be held in Russia and ten more countries, with helicopter service exports increasing by more than 26 percent.