Flights to Simferopol Become Cheaper
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While the negotiations on building a bridge spanning the Strait of Kerch between Krasnodar Krai and Crimea are still underway, air and water transport will take the brunt of carrying passengers to the peninsula. Authorities promise to increase the number of flights to Simferopol by 1.5 times this season. Also, the Crimean capital will be included in the government’s program for funding flights.
In an effort to support the government’s initiatives for lower ticket prices, Aeroflot has introduced special tariffs for flights to Crimea.
From April 1 to May 31 the carrier will be organizing up to 4 flights from Moscow to Simferopol a day, and from June 1 – up to 8 flights. Planes Airbus А320 and A321 will be servicing the route.
Rossiya Airlines, which is a part of Aeroflot group, is looking to launch flights from St. Petersburg to Simferopol on April 2, before the planned date. At first, the flight frequency will be one flight a day, and starting June 1 there will be two flights a day.
Donavia, another Aeroflot subsidiary airline, is launching a new flight program from Rostov-on-Don to Simferopol on April 28.
The passengers who are planning on flying to Crimea are offered 6 tariff types. The minimal price of a round-trip air ticket from Moscow to Simferopol is 7.5 thousand rubles, including all taxes and levies. A one-way ticket costs 4 thousand rubles. These prices will apply to more than a half of tickets for each flight.
Aeroflot is lowering tariffs for flights from St. Petersburg and Rostov-on-Don to Simferopol, as well as for transit flights from Simferopol to other Russian cities. The Aeroflot group airlines will provide a total of 77 flights to Simferopol per week.
Alexandr Sizintsev, General Director of Biletix, told TRN that users of the service have not yet responded to Aeroflot’s new tariffs. The expert proceeded to show statistics for the first half of March. According to them, from March 1 through March 15 of 2014 the Biletix clients purchased the same number of tickets to Simferopol as they did during the whole March of 2013; the number of search queries for the destination increased 2.5 times.
According to Sizintsev, the agency’s analysts determined that, despite the growing inflation rates, the price tag of flights from Russian cities to Simferopol has been constantly decreasing since 2001. In 2013 it was 10,087 rubles, and during the first three months of 2014 – 9,688 rubles.
Right now the main Russian cities that provide flights to Crimea are Moscow (92.6%), Yekaterinburg (1.41%), Kazan (1%), Novosibirsk (0.9%) and Nizhnevartovsk (0.5%). Also worthy of mention is the fact that in 2014 the air ticket sales have been dominated (73.9%) by Russian airlines.
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