BEIJING, December 16. /TASS/. A Moscow-bound plane with 287 Russian tourists, who were unable to leave China due to problems of their travel agency Pearl River, left the airport of Haikou at 5:17 Moscow time, a Russian diplomat told TASS.
"As part of a program to urgently return Russian tourists from Hainan to Russia, a plane of the Pegas Fly air carrier, also known as Ikar Airlines, took off at 10:17 local time (05:17 Moscow time) from the airport of Haikou, and is now heading to Moscow," said Grigory Kolyshkin, an attache of the Russian Consulate General in Guangzhou. "Consulate staff, together with Pearl River and Pegas Fly representatives, verified the lists of passengers and accommodated 287 people on board."
"The consulate general also informed the administration of the Khabarovsk Territory and the foreign ministry’s office in Khabarovsk about the situation with Khabarovsk tourists, who were unable to return home on Friday because they had no tickets," he continued. "According to our information, Russian state agencies are currently working on returning 161 tourists from Hainan to Khabarovsk."
He said that it was yet unclear when those tourists will be able to return home.
Earlier in the day, a Russian diplomat said that it was too difficult to establish the exact number of tourists, who need help to return to Russia, because some of Pearl River customers decided not to wait and left Hainan on their own.
"We have submitted a request to the government of Hainan. We are set to receive information on how many tourists out of 2,400 affected persons left China on their own. We were told that it would take some time to prepare this list, so now we are waiting," he said.
Earlier, the Irkutsk-based air carrier IrAero said it would suspend flights to two airports of China’s Hainan Island - Haikou and Sanya - due to the debts of the Pearl River tour operator that amount to about $2.3 million. Pearl River, which opened its office in Russia last year, said the company had no debts, and the departures were delayed due to breakdown of planes.
After the Russian authorities interfered, IrAero said it would evacuate all stranded tourists who have valid return tickets for IrAero flights. According to latest IrAero figures, about 1,500 Russian tourists are now unable to leave Haikou, many of them have been waiting for their departure since December 8.
The exact number of Russians who are unable to return home is unknown, due to the fact that Pearl River did not provide some of its customers with a return ticket, giving them a legally invalid itinerary receipt instead.
The first flight took tourists to Kazan on Tuesday, two more flights - to the Urals city of Ufa and the Volga Area city of Samara - were carried out on Thursday. On Friday night, a plane with 183 Russian tourists on board flew to Moscow via the Urals city of Chelyabinsk. According to Russia’s travel industry watchdog Rosturism, almost 1,200 Pearl River customers returned to their home country between December 12 and 14.