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Merger of Sheremetyevo, Vnukovo airports planned for 2013

Our plan is to compete the process in the first-second quarter of 2013

VLADIVOSTOK, September 8 (Itar-Tass) —— The unification of the property of Moscow's Sheremetyevo and Vnukovo airports will be completed in the first or the second quarter of 2013, International Airport Sheremetyevo Director-General Mikhail Vasilenko told a press conference on Saturday.

"Our plan is to compete the process in the first-second quarter of 2013," he said.

Consultants now work on the project and prepare the documents. The assets must be evaluated, and after that the procedure will be completed, he added.

Sheremetyevo will sell Vladivostok airport when the number of its passengers grows and the sale is profitable. To sell the airport complex now means to sell it at the cost that was invested. The task is to sell it as a business that has a substantial volume of transportations, the director noted.

The new airport terminal built by the APEC summit can have the maximum number of passengers already in a year. "The terminal must be enlarged in a year or two," Vasilenko believes.

The Sheremetyevo passenger traffic is expected to total about 25 million people in 2012, he said.

Airlines intensively increase their passenger traffic, by up to 26-27 percent. Airlines often provide aircraft of more capacity to carry as many passengers as possible.

Sheremetyevo reported the number of passengers totalled 22,550,000 in 2011.

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