OREANDA-NEWS. June 04, 2014. Aeroflot confirms that it will not use a limited number of rights that were granted to fly to certain destinations, in coordination with the Federal Air Transport Agency (Rosaviation). These decisions have been taken since March 2014 to improve the efficiency of the airline and they will not affect the level of activity or the quality of the service.

The route rights returned to Rosaviation concern mostly international destinations which are in any case not operated. Aeroflot long time ago stopped flights to Luanda (Angola), but only now the company received the official confirmation. Flights from Moscow to Damascus (Syria) are also suspended due to the difficult political situation in the Country.

Furthermore, even when a route authority is declined, it doesn’t mean that the company is going to stop operation on these flights. Thus the route Sochi — Bishkek (Kyrgyzstan) will be served by Aeroflot as a marketing partner of its subsidiary Donavia, with a code-share arrangement as before. The same applies to a number of flights from Saint Petersburg, operated by Rossiya Airlines as a part of Aeroflot Group.

Aeroflot, as any other airline, has no interest in retaining the permits for routes that will not be operated, as Authorities measure the effective utilization when issuing new permits, in which the company is truly interested. In this regard, Aeroflot initiated the periodical review, by requesting the Federal Air Transport Agency the revocation of the permits that were previously used for code-sharing with affiliates.

Hence, the cancellation of these permits has no relevance on the actual operation of current or planned flights. This is, to a large extent, a certain compliance procedure, aimed at optimizing the permits’ portfolio.

As a result of the planned optimization of route network and increasing its attractiveness to customers, Aeroflot passenger traffic amounted to 1.91 million people in April 2014, showing 20.0% year-on-year increase, which is significantly higher than the average growth rate of the Russian airline market as a whole during the same period (5.9%).