MOSCOW, August 21, /ITAR-TASS/. One of Russia’s major airlines, Transaero, has expressed its support for the position of the Federal Service for Civil Aviation, which accuses the fuel industry outlets providing jet fuel to airports of ungrounded hikes of the prices of kerosene, the airline’s press service said Thursday.
“The ungrounded growth of prices for jet kerosene may affect the operations of Russian airlines in a most immediate and highly deplorable way as it will push the ticket prices up,” Transaero warned. Its executives declined to provide further explanations.
The Federal Civil Aviation Service said earlier that an unexpected rise of tariffs for jet kerosene, which occurred this summer, had not been envisioned in the airlines’ operational plans.
“Quite obviously, a further increase of the costs of jet fuel over the short term will put a heavy financial burden on the main customers of Russian airlines - the passengers,” it said.
Other major airlines, too, voiced their reservations about the increases of tariffs. A spokesman for S7 said that the average price of fuel at Russian airports had grown 3% over the past four months.
“Growth of this kind isn’t typical for that period of the year,” he said. “Usually, the tariffs go down a little. For instance, they dropped 1% on the average in the summer of 2013.”
Aeroflot Group officials said they had not registered any significant rises of jet fuel tariffs at the airports where the jets of the group’s airlines get fuelled.
“The fluctuations of prices, which are traditionally seasonal, don’t cause concern,” an Aeroflot spokesman said. Still the group’s executives pointed out the growth of fuel prices at the airports serviced by the so-called single refueling complexes.
“The most problematic are the airports where the single refueling complexes belong to the oil company LUKOIL - for instance, in Samara, Surgut, Syktyvkar, and Tyumen where prices jumped in July and the April-to-August fluctuations totaled 6% to 7%,” the spokesman said.
The Federal Service for Civil Aviation said the price of a ton of jet kerosene grew 6% to 7% or by 1,000 to 4,000 rubles - at thirty Russian airports in the period of June to August 2014. Tariff increases were registered at the airports of the Volga area, the southern regions, and Siberia.
A number of Russian airlines have filed proposals with the federal aviation authorities to draw up a program of government support to the industry along the lines of a program effectuated in 2009 at the peak of the global financial and economic crisis.