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Aeroflot to set up new low-cost air carrier instead of Dobrolyot

“I believe that we can launch flights at the start of winter flight season from October 27," Aeroflot Director-General Vitaly Savelyev said

SELIGER (Tver region), August 24 /ITAR-TASS/. Russian national air carrier Aeroflot Group plans to create a new low-cost daughter airline instead of Dobrolyot that can launch flights starting from October 27, Aeroflot Director-General Vitaly Savelyev told reporters.

Dobrolyot has suspended its flights due to EU sanctions imposed on the carrier since August 4.

“We are preparing a road map [for resumption of flights],” he said. “I believe that we can launch flights at the start of winter flight season from October 27.We will proceed from this date. We will create a new daughter company. We are transferring airplanes, which make flights now, but under OrenAir brand, to this subsidiary and will develop it according to a low-cost carrier model.”

A new airline will operate four airplanes, Savelyev said.

The Aeroflot chief executive did not say about a possible name of the new air carrier. “All this is new, these documents are new, some time is needed for this,” he said in reply to a question about the need to receive a new certificate of an aircraft operator.

The national air carrier is also pondering several other variants to resume low-cost flights, Savelyev said.

“The first one is to wait until sanctions are lifted from us [the European Union plans to reconsider the sanction list on October 31],” he said, adding that “There is one more variant to lobby this issue [resumption of low-cost flights] through western lawyers...But this is in line with first variant.”

Aeroflot has also mulled Dobrolyot’s possible conversion from limited liability company in a joint stock company, but this was “problematic” and “difficult”, Savelyev said.

“Therefore, we consider a variant now that we will register a new air company after all,” the Aeroflot chief said, adding that “We are developing this particular scenario.”

He noted that a low-cost carrier model proved to be efficient for six weeks of Dobrolyot’s operation, so, Aeroflot intends to put it into practice any way.

Dobrolyot Airline was an Aeroflot totally controlled daughter company as a low-budget air carrier. The airline’s fleet included two airliners Boeing 737-800 NG and one airliner Sukhoi SuperJet-100. Before the end of 2014 Dobrolyot planned to increase its fleet to eight airplanes Boeing 737-800 NG through European leasing companies.