MOSCOW, March 25 (Itar-Tass) — Russian air companies are switching over to summer scheduled on Sunday. It will be in effect until October 27.
In summer, the biggest Russian air company “Aeroflot – Russian Airlines” will fly to 115 cities in Russia and abroad. The carrier is planning to launch regular international flights to new destinations, including Guangzhou (China), Krakow (Poland), Stuttgart (Germany), Vilnius (Lithuania) as well as Dnepropetrovsk, Donetsk, Odessa and Kharkov in Ukraine. Daily flights will be launched to new Russian destinations: Nizhnemkamsk, Novy Urengoi, Orenburg and Tomsk. Aeroflot will significantly increase the frequency of flights on aircraft belonging to its sister companies. Aeroflot will hold a one hundred percent responsibility for these commercial flights.
The Rossiya airline from St. Petersburg, which is integrated with the Aeroflot group of companies, will fly to 24 cities in Russia, 40 cities abroad and 22 in the CIS. Flights to Kazan will be new in Rossiya’s summer schedule. Flights from St. Petersburg to Kazan kick off on May 1. There will be five flights a week: on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday and Sunday. Rossiya will also increase the number of flights to such popular destinations as Novosibirsk, Omsk, Kaliningrad, Yekaterinburg, Irkutsk, Rostov, Sochi, Tyumen and others. Seven additional planes will fly to Mineralnye Vody and Krasnodar in southern Russia and to Murmansk in the North. There will be more flights to Rome, Milan, Larnaca, Baku, Osh , Namangan, Urgench, etc.
The second largest national air carrier Transaero will make flights to a record number of destinations (160) this summer season. The airline will increase to 40 the number of direct international flights from Russian regions. For examples, flights to Barcelona will be made from 13 Russian regions and to Bangkok from nine Russian regions. For the first time in its history, Transaero will launch international flights from Domodedovo, Sheremetievo and Vnukovo.
The Sibir air carrier (S7Airlines) will fly to 27 countries in 129 directions. On March 26, the company opens new daily flights to Minsk. With the start of the holiday season late in May, S7 airlines will start making flights from Moscow to Odessa (Ukraine) and Pula (Croatia); to Dubrovnik (Croatia) and Valencia (Spain) in June. More planes will fly from Moscow to popular resorts like Palma de Mallorca (Spain), Split (Croatia), Burgas (Bulgaria), Alicante (Spain) and Tivat (Montenegro). S7 Airlines will resume traditional summer flights to Varna (Bulgaria) and Dublin, the capital of Ireland. New direct flights will connect the Russian cities of Omsk, Ulan-Ude and Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky with Beijing in June.
Foreign airlines operating in Russia will also switch to summer schedule. Starting from March 25, German Lufthansa will fly to two Moscow airports in Domodedovo and Vnukovo. In summer, the German carrier will perform 7 daily flights from Domodeodov to Frankfurt and Munich and another seven flights from Vnukovo to Frankfurt, Dusseldorf, Berlin and Hamburg.
On March 25, Turkish Airlines will move their flights from Moscow to Istanbul, Antalya and Ankara from Sheremetievo and Domodedovo to Vnukovo.
Air France will increase to five the number of its flights to Marseille from Moscow’s Sheremetievo airport.
Alitalia will increase the number of flights from Sheremetievo to Rome to three a day. The air company will continue regular flights to Milan (daily evening flight from Moscow) and Turin (evening flight on Monday, Thursday and Saturday).
The Yakutia air company will make traditional flights in 91 directions. There will also be a number of new flights: Yakutsk- Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky (direct flight), Moscow-Tiksi, Khabarovsk-Shakhtyorsk, Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky-Anchorage (USA), Krasnodar-Bishkek, Moscow-Makhachkala and Moscow-Komsomolsk-on-Amur.
The summer schedule of the Kuban air company based in Krasnodar also contains some new routes. “Kuban” will make 4 flights a week from Moscow to Kaliningrad and three flights a week from Moscow to Yekaterinburg. Flights to Yekaterinburg start on March 27. Residents in the Siberian cities of Omsk and Barnaul will be able to take a direct flight to Sochi on the Black Sea.