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NordStar Airlines announces flights between Norilsk and Black Sea resort

The flight Norilsk-Samara-Gelendzhik will be serviced every Monday

KRASNODAR, June 8. /TASS/. The NordStar Airline made the first flight from Norilsk to Gelendzhik, a Black Sea resort. It will be a weekly service, Gelendzhik airport’s press service told reporters on Tuesday.

"NordStar has begun servicing flights from Krasnoyarsk, Norilsk and Samara to Gelendzhik <…>. The flight Norilsk - Samara - Gelendzhik will be serviced every Monday," the press service said, adding that no direct flights had been available on that route.

Additionally, the air company has resumed flights between Krasnoyarsk and Gelendzhik. They are operated every Sunday.

"Over January - May, 2021, the airport served 148,481 passengers, mostly travelling to or from Moscow," Airport Gelendzhik’s Director General Ivan Taranchenko said. "However, due to the regional flights to Gelendzhik, in June the numbers of passengers will grow."

"In 2020, the airport began servicing direct flights to Krasnoyarsk, and over about 6 weeks more than 2,000 passengers travelled that route," the press service added, quoting the airport’s director general.

The Gelendzhik airport is the only airport among the Krasnoyarsk Region’s hubs, which does not service international flights. In 2020, the airport serviced about 482,000 passengers. The hub’s upgrade began in 2020. It will have a new terminal, and the number of passengers may increase by five times - to 890 passengers an hour. The new terminal is planned to be ready by end of 2021, the investments will make more than 4 billion rubles ($55 million).

The Krasnodar Region is Russia’s main resort. In 2020, it welcomed 12 million visitors, though a year earlier, in 2019 - almost 17 million. Experts forecast that in case of favorable epidemiology conditions, about 19 million people will visit the region in 2021.

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