Russia “expands geography” of subsidised flights

Russia has “expanded the geography” of domestic passenger flights subsidised by the national budget, a statement posted on the website of the prime minister’s office revealed on August 15. Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin signed Decree No. 1205 on behalf of the President of Russia, Vladimir Putin, on August 10, amending the earlier Decree No. 1242 of December 25, 2013. A further 138 routes are now eligible for air service subsidies. Airlines operating “modern Russian aircraft” will be given priority rights to the funding, the statement said. Carriers whose routes are already co-financed by Russia’s far-flung regions also retain the right to compensation from the federal budget. The decree reveals, for example, that links with cities such as Adler/Sochi, Chita, Gorno-Altaysk, Irkutsk Int’l, Kaliningrad, Krasnoyarsk Yemelyanovo, Makhachkala, and Nizhniy Novgorod, as well as Simferopol in Crimea, annexed from Ukraine in 2014, are among those that will benefit. None of the routes connect the cities with Moscow, but second city St. Petersburg is on the list with subsidies on offer for any carrier that can link it with Belgorod, Penza, Sovetskij, or Tobolsk, a historic city east of the Urals. The Russian government has allocated a total of RUB3 billion rubles (USD40.5 million) for subsidies to “reduce ticket prices for certain routes,” the statement said, adding: “It is expected that thanks to this decision, about 450,000 people will additionally use the services of the aviation industry.” In November 2019, the prime minister at the time, Dmitry Medvedev, signed a separate decree, No. 1466, to expand the list of subsidised routes from and to Russia’s far eastern regions for 2020, from 152 to 176.