OREANDA-NEWS. January 26, 2011. In 2010, Ural Airlines, following its business development plans, reached the highest results in its history. It has been the first year when the airline transported over 1.5 million passengers; the exact figure is 1 792 220 PAX, 20 percent more than in 2009.

The number of domestic passengers increased by 20 percent against the previous year - 846 295 PAX. In 2010, we were active participants in the program of subsidizing travels of WWII veterans, and carried over 1000 people under this program.

There were 661 402 international passengers, of which 167 190 took scheduled flights of the airline - 59 percent more than in 2009. A factor in these achievements was the many new air services launched during the year. For example, from Ekaterinburg Ural Airlines started to fly to Rome, Istanbul, Vienna, Sofia and Sanya. From Ufa and Kazan, cities of strategic importance for the airline, we launched the services to Dubai, and from Samara, to Pula and Tivat.

The number of CIS passengers in 2010 amounted to 284 523, and that is a 65% increase against 2009. The growth is connected with the start of new services to Khujand and Dushanbe from Krasnoyarsk, Kazan, Samara and Ufa. New flights appeared to Tashkent from Krasnoyarsk, Samara and Krasnodar. 

Alongside with expanding the geography of air services, Ural Airlines also develops the network of its own sales offices country-wide; thus, in 2010 several new offices opened in Irkutsk, Novosibirsk, Krasnodar and Ekaterinburg.

During the twelve months of the year, the airplanes of our airline made 16 477 flights; that is a 22 percent, or 2 929 flights, increase against 2009. This figure includes 4 945 international, 8 546 domestic and 2 986 CIS flights. Following its main policy of establishing air services between Russia's largest cities, Ural Airlines opened new flights from Krasnodar to Moscow, Novosibirsk and Vladivostok; from Norilsk to Novosibirsk and Krasnoyarsk; and from Ekaterinburg to Kazan, Ufa and Krasnoyarsk.

Another reason for the increased passenger traffic and number of flights is new code share and interline agreements concluded by us in 2010 with RusLine, Avia Traffic, SCAT, Kyrgyzstan Airlines and IrAero. 

And it is our firm intention to continue developing our route network; we want to expand the traffic, for example, between Chita and Vladivostok, between Khabarovsk and Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky. We will be able to increase the number of flights through upgrading the aircraft fleet, and three more new Airbuses A320 and A321 will come in 2011.

Considering all the operational indicators, Ural Airlines is at present one of Russia's top ten airlines, and we intend to take only the leading places in rankings in future, too.