Minister says Russian airlines' traffic can fall by 75% in 2020

MOSCOW, May 18 (PRIME) -- The passenger traffic of Russian airlines can fall by 75% in 2020 under the basic forecast of the Transport Ministry, Minister Yevgeny Ditrikh told reporters on May 16. 

"The forecast that we call basic is U-shaped. We will be at the bottom for a certain time and therefore, we will potentially carry a quarter of last year’s number of passengers if we start intensive flights in autumn rather than in July and will finally recover the industry only by September next year," Ditrikh said.

The optimistic scenario envisages a 53.1% fall of traffic and a V-shaped recovery.

Russia's flagship airline Aeroflot can get a 7.9 billion ruble state support out of 23.4 billion rubles allocated to support of airlines, he said. "Preliminary calculation of how Aeroflot will account for the subsidies is 7.9 (billion rubles)," he said.

S7, Ural Airlines, Smartavia and Azur Air have also applied for aid, according to Ditrikh.  The first payments are to be made on Monday.

Ditrikh also said that a bill on support to airports is to be approved until the end of May. 

(73.2056 rubles – U.S. $1)

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