PRESS: Airlines to get 365 rbl per lost passenger in compensation

MOSCOW, May 8 (PRIME) – Russia air carriers will get 365 rubles per each passenger lost in a reporting month of 2020 as compared with the same month of 2019 under a Transport Ministry 23.4 billion ruble compensation plan, Vedomosti business daily reported on Friday.

The ministry said in the document that the 365 rubles is the sum of spending of all Russian airlines per passenger on wages, airport fees, and payments to leasing companies in 2019. The subsidies should compensate contractions in passenger traffic in February–July to be spent on wages to pilots and flight attendants, payments to leasing companies, and airport services, the business daily reported.

Of all Russian airlines, only Aeroflot and its subsidiary Rossiya lost by about 100,000 passengers on the year in February, and they can get 36 million rubles of compensations for the month. In March, the aviation industry lost 2.5 million passengers as compared with March 2019, and subsidies to all airlines may amount to about 900 million rubles for the month.

The top managers of three airlines told Vedomosti that 365 rubles per passenger is a very small amount, while 23.4 billion rubles are not even close to covering all losses of the industry from the coronavirus. Under the distribution plan, the highest subsidies will be given to the companies that lost the most passengers supporting outsiders, an airline employee told the business daily.

Another condition for an airline to receive subsidies is that they have to continue passenger transportation and fire no more than 10% of pilots and flight attendants each month. This means that low-cost airline Pobeda, airlines Nordwind and Icarus, and charter carriers Azur Air, Royal Flight, and iFly will not get subsidies for April and May as they suspended flights in April.

The ministry plans to distribute subsidies equally by 3.89 billion rubles per month in February–July, which equals to compensation of a reduction in passenger traffic of 10.67 million passengers. But the traffic did not contract noticeably in February and shrank by 2.5 million people in March. The combined traffic in April 2019 stood at 9.4 million passengers, so subsidy would not be distributed in full even if passenger transportation stopped completely.

The plan encompasses a decreasing coefficient if there is not enough subsidies, but no increasing coefficient that would be in force when money is left, like it will be for February, March, and April. The ministry also acknowledges that airlines will not get the entire sum of 23.4 billion rubles.

(74.1169 rubles – U.S. $1)

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